Re-Aquaintanceen-us553C29A707

Re-Aquaintance

by Solstice Muse

Table of Contents

Prologue
Chapter 1: Skin and Bones
Chapter 2: Nex Ultionis
Chapter 3: Amusing Yourselves
Chapter 4: Sniffles
Chapter 5: The Longest Night
Chapter 6: Changes
Chapter 7: Picking Up Where You Left Off
Epilogue

Prologue

It was ten to five in the morning. Ginny's feet were throbbing and she couldn't walk anymore. She'd found a place that stayed open 'til three and had been wandering around ever since it closed. She thudded down on a bench near Embankment tube station and looked out at the Thames. Despite the chill in the air, she wrenched her boots off and laid her raw feet on the pavement to cool.

She sighed and rolled her head back to look to the skies. She thought how fascinating the stars must be tonight, not that she could see any as she sat in the centre of one of the world's most brightly lit cities, and watched a couple of huge moths as they repeatedly head-butted the street lamp overhead. She closed her eyes for a second.

A few minutes passed before she opened her eyes again and looked up at the sound of a drunk shouting at a green-bearded homeless man on Hungerford Bridge. She shuffled in her seat and looked back out at the river, considering moving along somewhere else; this wasn't one of the nicest places to be at this time of the morning. She leaned forward and tried to put some weight on her now-numb feet. No, still sore.

She yawned and pulled her wand out of her pocket. She scanned to her left and right quickly and considered numbing her mangled soles magically until she could get some healing ointment on them before remembering the story her father had told her about Muggle cameras that filmed moving images all over London. The Ministry had had all sorts of problems recently with magic being caught on camera. She huffed and put the wand away again.

She listened to the Thames lapping against the walls of the bank loudly. Then she frowned - the tide was well and truly out, the bank now just a sea of glorious London mud. She listened again: it wasn't splashing, it was squelching.

Then she heard an exasperated exclamation.

"I don't believe this!"

Ginny stood up, wincing as she hobbled over to the river's edge, muttering obscenities with every step.

"Ow, fuck, shit, ahh, crap..."

She tipped herself forward onto the railing to spare her poor soles and peered over.

"Shit!" said the dark haired figure as he pulled off his shoe and hurled it down into the mud.

"What the f..." Ginny began to whisper to herself, before she recognised who the person wading in the mud was. "Oi!"

Harry Potter looked up and held his mud-caked arms in the air.

"Don't worry, I'm not trying to drown myself or anything, I've lost my shoe."

Ginny frowned.

"You just threw it in the mud. I saw you."

"No, that was the other one."

Ginny realised that Harry hadn't recognised her yet.

"Why are you down there?"

"I lost my keys too!" he shouted up as he slapped his hands onto his hips with a revolting squelch.

Ginny laughed. She really laughed, one of her cackles. The shoeless, keyless, mud-caked Harry looked at her properly for the first time.

"Ginny? Is that...? Blimey it's you!"

Ginny clung to the railings as she tried to control her giggling fit.

"What?" Harry stammered, "Why are you here?"

"I dunno, it's where I ended up," she managed to respond as she got a grip on herself, "How did your keys get down there?"

"No, the shoe went first," Harry explained as if it was perfectly logical, "I was walking up there and...I was kicking this tin can, and as I kicked it, my shoe went flying over the edge," he shook his head, as though unable to believe his own life.

"So you threw your keys in on a rescue mission?" Ginny asked, still in the throes of amusement.

"No, they fell in the mud while I was hunting for the shoe," Harry said before bursting into laughter.

They looked at each other for a few moments, laughing, before Harry put his hands on his hips.

"Fancy seeing you here," he said casually.

Ginny howled at this flippant delivery of a nightclub pick-up line from the sludge of the river Thames.

"This really is so weird, isn't it?" she sighed.

He looked around him and then down at himself before answering her.

"Um...yep."

A little while later Ginny was sitting beside Harry, helping him to scrape the riverbed off his clothes. He wrung out one of his sleeves onto the pavement.

"Ugh, disgusting, there's probably bits of plague in that," he grimaced.

"Bits of plague?" Ginny's eyes widened. "Oh bloody hell, you sound like Ron!"

Harry chuckled and sat back on the bench to summarise their current situation.

"So you can't Apparate because your feet are tenderised and I can't walk 'cause I have no shoes. But you can get into your house because you have your key."

"No, no, no, I can get into my home because I have a key but I can't get to my home due to my shredded feet and lack of Muggle money," Ginny corrected.

Harry's face fell and he quickly felt his back pocket.

"Oh thank you," he sighed as he looked to the heavens, "I still have my wallet."

"How much have ya got?" Ginny asked hopefully.

"A fiver and about two quid's worth of silver."

"Ok," Ginny said with a confident nod, "so we get a cab to Trafalgar Square, where we can get a night bus to my house. Inside my house is a Muggle washing machine, a bath and a bed."

"Sounds good," Harry nodded, "but how come you know about Muggle night buses and cabs and stuff?"

Ginny laughed.

"Harry I've been living in London for a year now, I think I know my way around in both Muggle and Magical ways by now."

Harry looked impressed.

"So," he said awkwardly, "you um, you live on your own?"

"No," Ginny smiled wickedly and chuckled as she saw Harry's face fall slightly, "I share the place with Ron, Bill and Bill's little boy Luke."

"Bill has a son?" Harry gasped before frowning, "Wait, Bill isn't with Fleur anymore? Ron lives in London too? Where's Hermione?"

"Let's get that cab first, shall we?"

Chapter 1: Skin and Bones

"Are you coming out?" Ginny whispered through the bathroom door.

"Yeah," Harry shouted back.

"Shhhh," Ginny whispered through the crack in the door, "Baby Luke's asleep. Don't pull the plug when you get out either. I want to get the worst of the gunk off your jeans in the bath before I put 'em in the machine."

Harry opened the door and stood before Ginny with a towel around his waist.

"Are they really that bad?"

"They're caked in it. Shitty green mud."

"Sorry," Harry said as he cringed.

Ginny dropped the jeans into the already stagnant-looking water with a plop and began to swoosh them around. She had said something about the Scourgify spell not taking the smell away so needing to wash them in her half magical, Muggle machine. Apparently Mr Weasley had customised it for them to clean up after Bill's baby boy.

"How are your feet?" Harry asked as he looked down at them and winced.

Ginny grumbled and lifted her right foot off the floor to show him the state of her sole. Harry took her foot tenderly in his hands.

"Don't touch it!" Ginny snapped.

"I'm not going to touch it. Just relax, will you?" he leaned forward and blew gently onto her heel and the ball of her foot where she had two raw burst blisters.

Ginny had never felt less desirable in her life.

"Have you got ice cubes or frozen peas or something?" he asked as he rested her foot gently back down onto the cool damp lino.

"Um..." Ginny mentally scanned the contents of the freezer,"...there's a bag of mince."

Harry paused for a second and gave her a look, an 'are you being serious?' look, before making his way to the kitchen.

"Frozen minced beef, eh? Your mother would be so proud."

Ginny punched him in the arm before pulling the jeans out of the bath, wringing out the excess water and marching out to throw them into the washing machine, tapping the top of it with her wand; it sprang into action in complete silence.

She went to the freezer and grabbed the bag of mince and gestured for Harry to go into the living room. They sat on the sofa and Harry lifted her feet up and put the mince down on the floor beneath them. She lowered her feet down on top of it and gave an uncomfortable sigh.

"Ah, cold!"

"That's the point," Harry smirked.

Ginny huffed and waved her arm vaguely towards the stairs.

"In my room I've got an ointment, if you fetch it for me I can smear it on and the blisters will heal in five minutes."

"Okay," Harry nodded, "which room is yours?"

They sat reclined on either end of the sofa, Harry rubbing the fennel-scented ointment into Ginny's sore feet and Ginny giving out the odd moan of pleasure. He could feel the skin healing beneath his fingertips and tried to figure out where to begin the inevitable conversation.
In the end Ginny started it. He'd always known she would. She hated beating around the bush.

"So how long have you been back in England?" she sighed as she wiggled her toes and smiled contentedly.

"Two weeks now, I think," Harry said, hoping she wouldn't be upset with him for not coming to find her right away, "Yeah, it'll be a fortnight on Thursday."

"And you were going to hang around in the Thames, were you?" she smirked.

"No I was going to go to the Burrow, but I thought I'd come back into magical life gradually. I was going to stay in London as a Muggle for a week, then move into Grimmauld Place for a couple of days while I dealt with some business at Gringotts, and then I planned to go home. Well, your home. You know what I mean?"

"My home is your home, Harry," Ginny smiled, "It always has been."

Harry sighed with relief that he was still going to be welcome at the Burrow.

"So everybody understood why I went into hiding then?" he frowned.

"Of course we did," Ginny said as if Harry was mad to think otherwise, "that whole hoop-la. The Ministry pulling you one way to be their poster-boy, the Aurors wanting you to be their spokesperson and giving you an 'honorary' position but not actually recruiting you because you were too high-profile to ever be undercover, the Prophet stalking you for juicy gossip."

"Stalking you, too," Harry said as he remembered all the hassle Ginny had from Rita Skeeter wannabes.

"Yes, well, they were gone soon enough once they realised you'd done a runner."

"I sent you owls, all of you," Harry said, anxious to find out that they had been kept informed of his activities the whole time. "You got them all, didn't you? They didn't get intercepted by the Prophet's vultures, did they?"

"No, we got them," Ginny shrugged, "It sounds as if you saw some wonderful places. I wish I could have gone with you."

As soon as Ginny completed the sentence her face seemed to freeze and then fall. She appeared to be feeling guilty about something.

"What is it?"

She shook her head and pulled her healed feet out of Harry's slick ointment-covered hands to cross her legs and lean forward.

"I'm glad I stayed behind, Harry. I'm glad I was here for my family when they needed me."

Harry wiped his hands on his t-shirt and then took Ginny's pale, soft hands in his own. Something had obviously gone on between Bill and Fleur, and there was something about Hermione not living in the house - she and Ron had been so very much together when Harry had left on his quest for privacy - that made him feel greatly concerned.

"I'm sorry I put that shield up so owls couldn't find me. I should have come up with a way for Errol or Pig to get through," Harry said, his shoulders slumping, "for emergencies, y'know? I'm sorry."

"There would have been nothing you could have done and Bill and Ron wouldn't have let us trouble you anyway," Ginny shrugged, but there was something about the way she said the words that made Harry feel suddenly cold inside."

"Wait, Ron? Something happened to Ron while I was away? Is he alright?" Harry sputtered.

"He's fine, everything's good, everybody's doing really well and there's nothing for you to worry about, okay?" Ginny said with a look of determination.

Harry exhaled his relief and broke into a smile as Ginny continued.

"The thing is, well, Fleur died."

Harry's face gave up on trying to smile when he heard this.

"What?" he gasped, "How is that alright, Ginny?"

She raised her hand and pressed a finger to his lips.

"You knew something had happened when I told you Bill was here with the baby," she said sadly. "She died just after Luke was born. There were complications, it was really fast and she was gone without warning."

"But the healers?" Harry said as he put his hand to his head in shock.

"Healers heal the sick, Harry, they can't bring back the dead," Ginny hugged her arms to herself and looked into the dying embers of the fire that had been burning when they arrived at the house.

Harry shuffled along the sofa and hugged Ginny to him. She curled her arms around him and they sat like that for some considerable time.

"So Bill and the baby moved in with me, Ron and Hermione," Ginny said, as they pulled apart again to look into each other's eyes.

"Hermione lived here then, with Ron?" Harry said with a shake of the head as he tried to keep up with the conversation.

"Yes it was the four of us and Luke, we all helped out, we were all there for Bill and we were like our own little branch of the Weasley family here in London." Ginny smiled. "Despite Bill being broken-hearted, we were doing really well, and soon he stared to heal and laugh and now he's Bill again."

Harry smiled before reluctantly plucking up the courage to ask the next question.

"So Ron and Hermione?"

Ginny's smile grew very wide and incredibly confident all of a sudden.

"Well a while ago now Ron was getting a bit tired from doing not much at all and Hermione bullied him into going to St Mungo's for a check up, she was saying things about anaemia and diabetes and other Muggle words that none of us really understood."

Harry nodded, eager for her to get to the point and disconcerted by the grin she was still flashing him.

"So they found something that was making him tired and ill, and it was spreading, and Hermione called it cancer and went a little dramatic, but it wasn't," Ginny grabbed Harry's hands desperately as his face drained of all colour and his jaw hung slack, "It isn't Muggle cancer, Harry, it's a magical thing, like a side-effect witches and wizards sometimes develop when we have a near-death experience."

Harry didn't know whether to pull out his hair or calmly nod and have an emotionless intellectual discussion.

"Well, what's a near-death experience? Surely every professional Quidditch player must have this if it's just missing getting your brains bashed out by a Bludger," Harry said with an uncomprehending shake of the head.

"Not that type of near-death experience, Harry," Ginny said as she shuffled a little closer and the smile she seemed determined to wear faded into a normal expression of calm confidence, "By near-death, they mean when a person is inflicted with a fatal curse, or a lethal magical weapon strikes them, or," Ginny left a meaningful pause, "for example, a fatal poisoning."

Harry's heart clenched inside his chest.

"The mead," he whispered to himself.

Ginny nodded and took his hand with both of hers.

"But I was hit by a fatal curse and survived," Harry said before she could continue, "So that should mean that I..."

"You would have displayed symptoms within the first ten years of your life, Harry. After a decade the wizard or witch is declared in the clear, and like I said, it's never definite. Only some magical folk suffer from this after surviving the un-survivable, one in three."

"So," Harry said as he struggled to organise his thoughts, "Ron's ill because he survived the poisoning?"

Ginny took a deep breath in and out before straightening her back and lifting her head in a defiant manner.

"Right, here we go," she began. "The bezoar saved him from the poison, but that little stone had magical properties and had to become something, didn't it?"

Harry nodded once.

"Okay, so it could have just lain dormant for the rest of Ron's life, or other magic and hexes could have aggravated it over time, and Ron did get hit with a few nasty things after the poisoning, didn't he? The war wasn't kind to any of you."

Harry swallowed and nodded again for her to continue.

"Well that's what happened to Ron: the bezoar was aggravated by a combination of hexes, curses and stress, and it began to grow and spread; if it got too big, it would have started to weaken his internal organs and eventually shut them down."

"Oh God," Harry said with a shudder.

That sounded a lot like a Muggle tumour to him and he didn't like the sound of this at all.

"But thanks to Hermione, they discovered what was happening early on, and they've been treating it for eight months. It's gradually reducing, and soon it'll be gone altogether and he'll be perfectly healthy again."

Ginny had that confident grin on her face again. Harry felt reassured by her attitude now, rather then cautious of it.

"So he's getting better?"

"Much," Ginny nodded proudly, "It's a hell of an aggressive treatment though, very rough on him, but the bezoar is retreating and breaking down inside him ever so slowly. He could be getting the all clear as early as next year."

"Early?" Harry blinked, "Next year is early? Next year is five months away, Ginny."

"Like I said, it's a slow process, Harry, but we don't count the days, we just enjoy them," Ginny smiled a smile of genuine warmth and happiness.

"And Hermione?" Harry almost dreaded to imagine what could have happened to her while he was away.

"She lives just across the road," Ginny nodded over her shoulder. "Ron broke up with her a little while after he got diagnosed. He thought it was for the best, Hermione didn't agree, there was a huge fight and she moved out."

Harry was about to bemoan Ron's obstinacy when Ginny arched an eyebrow at him and shook her head.

"Don't you dare say what an idiot he's been when you did the exact same thing to me, Harry Potter. He saw you walk away from me to minimise my pain should something go wrong and he went and did the same thing. He followed your example, so if you slag him off for what he did, then you've got to accept the same yourself."

Harry rubbed his forehead roughly.

"So she lives across the road? That's got to be awkward!"

"What?" Ginny frowned before rolling her eyes and laughing, "Oh no! They made up within the week and were best friends again. They're just not a couple anymore and she isn't living here, although she's here every day so she might as bloody well be!"

Harry chuckled at this oh-so-Hermione-like behaviour.

"So they're still Ron and Hermione...just not Ron and Hermione?" Harry confirmed.

"Exactly," Ginny nodded, "and the second Ron gets the all-clear, which he will, she's going to dare him to come up with a reason for them not to be together and then have him back no matter what he has to say about it!"

Harry felt his chest ease a little more now.

"I wish I could have been here for all of you."

"No you don't," Ginny said as she scrunched up her face and shook her head rapidly, "You really don't."

The two of them sat in silence for a few minutes, their fingers entwining and their knees touching softly, before Harry leaned in close to Ginny and parted his lips. He hesitated.

"Is this okay?" he asked her nervously.

Ginny smiled and bridged the gap. Their lips met and her slender fingers were sliding into his unruly black hair while Harry's glided along the contours of her body. The kiss was passionate and lingering and, as far as Harry was concerned, over far too soon. Ginny smiled against his lips and rested her forehead against his.

"I missed that."

"Me too," Harry breathed heavily into her face.

"Do you want to sleep on the sofa or would you like to come with me to my room?"

Harry felt a strangled scream of joy at the back of his throat but not a sound escaped his lips. Ginny laughed and took his hand, pulling him up from the sofa.

"It's really late, Harry, actually it's alarmingly early, and Luke will be up soon wanting his morning feed, so we really will just be sleeping, you know?" Ginny shrugged and set her face into a petulant pout, "Unless you had other ungentlemanly ideas, Mr Potter, in which case I will throw you out on the street in your underwear."

Harry grinned. Ginny's deadpan delivery was a hard thing to grow accustomed to, but he was well attuned to her teasing now, and lunged forward to tickle her.

"Nice to know some things never change, little Miss Wind-up!"

Ginny squealed and gave Harry a playful slap before shushing him and pulling him up the stairs by the hand.

Harry woke up at the sound of an almighty crash from downstairs and sat bolt upright in Ginny's bed. Before he even had time to think, he had put his glasses on with one hand and grabbed his wand with the other. Instincts were hard to shake off after all those years, after all.

There was a billow of sheets and Ginny threw herself from the bed and ran from the room in nothing but her nightie. He heard her thundering down the stairs and shouting something fearfully. Harry quickly checked that he wasn't totally naked and jumped out of the bed to run after her.

"...scared the shit out of me!" Ginny was huffing.

"Sorry but it's not exactly early in the morning Ginny," Bill's voice said distractedly, "What time did you get home, exactly?"

"Oh sorry, mum!" Ginny snapped.

Harry paused halfway down the stairs and leaned over the banister. He saw a mess of broken breakfast things and food all over the kitchen floor. Bill was on his knees trying to clear it up while clutching a wriggling strawberry blonde baby boy under his arm. The mischievous little one was trying to wrestle his father's wand out of his hand and sent it flying across the kitchen before grabbing a handful of something from the mess on the floor.

"Here, let me take him, Bill," Hermione's voice said before she stepped into view and lifted the chuckling baby Weasley into her arms and uncurling his tiny fist to remove some kind of mush from his hand, "No, Luke, dirty!"

Hermione looked Luke in the eye and poked out her tongue after she said this and Luke did the same and dropped the breakfast sludge onto Bill's head.

"Oh, sorry," Hermione said before brushing the mess off of the baby and carrying him out of sight again.

"Don't worry, Hermione," Bill sighed, "I'm used to crap being dumped on me by now."

"She said put it down and he put it down." Ron's oh-so-familiar chortle of amusement lifted Harry's heart, and he strained to lean over the banister further to see his best friend.

"Did you eat anything before my demon-spawn yanked the tablecloth off?" Bill said as he lifted his head and cast a fierce look deeper into the kitchen.

"It's alright, I'll get something later on," Ron answered.

"No," Bill said firmly, "you're eating now. We're all eating now, all five of us!"

Ron let out a growl and Ginny groaned.

"I want to go back to sleep, I'll eat when I wake up," she said with annoyance.

"You want to play at being a night owl, that's your prerogative, Ginny but you will sit and eat breakfast with us all now and you'll bloody like it too!" Bill barked gruffly.

"Scourgify!" Hermione called out and the kitchen was cleaned up around Bill, who still knelt in the centre of the floor looking up at Ginny with an expression that was scarily like Mrs Weasley's when she was talking to the twins.

"Thanks, Hermione," Bill sighed before straining as he got back to his feet, "Oh, I've never felt so bloody old in all my life!" he grumbled before walking towards Ginny and dragging her out into the hallway by the elbow.

"Oi!" Ginny complained before Bill leaned down to look her in the eye with fierce determination.

"Knackered, hung-over, completely paralysed from the nose hairs down, I don't care, Ginny," he said in a low determined voice, "I've got to feed Luke and I've got to coax Ron into eating something and neither of them will do as they're told if I let you off, will they?"

Ginny opened her mouth to speak but Bill raised a warning finger and carried on.

"So you will sit down at that bloody table and you will eat as if you are enjoying it and we will not leave the table until everybody's plates are clean, understand?"

"Sorry, Bill, it's just that..." Ginny began before Bill raised both his hands and shook his head as he took a step back, away from his little sister.

"Don't want to hear it, Gin!"

"Rough night, was it?" she asked as she peered back into the kitchen.

Bill dropped his hands down to his sides and released all his tension with a single sigh.

"You have no idea."

Ginny stepped forward and gave her brother a cuddle, which he almost collapsed into.

"He doesn't have another treatment for three days, we should all get a couple of easy nights now, shouldn't we?" she whispered as she rubbed Bill's back soothingly.

"He's puking up three times more then he's eating," Bill sighed as he broke away from her and ran his hand over his long hair, the scars on his face crinkling against the worry lines to create a chessboard pattern on his forehead, "I don't know where it all comes from."

"Shh, don't fret about it; this is just a particularly rough patch, and we've had them before. We'll just keep plugging away with it, won't we?"

Bill smiled and nodded in a bracing manner before glancing up over Ginny's head and directly into Harry's face.

"Bloody hell!"

Ginny spun around and broke into a wide grin.

"This was what I was trying to tell you, Bill, I found him in the Thames!"

"Found who in the Thames?" Hermione was saying as she stepped into the doorway, still clutching the baby in her arms, and followed Bill and Ginny's line of sight over the banister, "Harry?"

Harry smiled at her and set off the rest of the way down the stairs while Ginny explained their bizarre meeting at Embankment. While Harry was bear-hugged by Bill, who then took his son back from Hermione so she could launch herself bodily at her prodigal friend, Ginny giggled before stepping to one side to reveal Ron's huge grin lighting up his pale face.

"Where the bloody hell have you been?" Ron said before chuckling and making his way through the narrow, crowded hallway, "Welcome back, Harry!"

While feeling delighted to see his best friend, Harry also felt as if his stomach had just been put through a mangle. Ron was so thin. He was as tall and freckled as ever, his fair skin was even more so than usual, and his hair was about two inches longer then Harry remembered it being last time he saw him. Ron reached Harry and gave him a hug and a slap on the back before stepping back to look him up and down approvingly.

"You look great," he beamed. "I was afraid we'd get you back and you'd be all craggy and world-weary like Lupin!"

Harry snorted while still unable to stop staring at the emaciated form of his best friend in the entire world.

"Oh, thanks!"

Bill carried Luke back into the kitchen to pull an extra chair up to the breakfast table and attempt to salvage some of the ruined breakfast. Hermione paused before following after him, she looked over her shoulder when she got to the kitchen door and her eyes welled with tears. She knew that seeing Ron like this for the first time must have been a shock and she didn't seem to want to draw attention to it.

"So you're back for good?" Ron asked eagerly.

"I'm not going anywhere," Harry said with total sincerity.

"You moving in?" he probed further.

"Whoa there," Ginny said as she gave Ron a light slap on the arm, "give him a chance to breathe. He thought we all still lived at the Burrow, that's where he was planning on living, give him a minute to adjust!"

Ron threw a playful scowl at his sister, who grinned back at him, and then he rolled his eyes and returned his full attention to Harry.

"Sorry, but we've got plenty of room and it's well cheap!"

Harry laughed.

"You could be an estate agent, Ron!"

The three of them shared a chuckle before Harry's eyes flickered down Ron's thin body and returned to his face again. Ron had seen him do it and gave a shrug.

"I know," he said with a resigned smile, "but what can you do, eh?"

"You can eat," Ginny said teasingly as she tugged at Ron's arm.

"Who needs mum when I've got you and Bill!" Ron snorted and Ginny cackled wickedly before setting off into the kitchen.

Ron and Harry stared at each other for a moment before Harry shook his head and tried to make light of the situation, as was obviously the way the family were coping with this whole thing.

"I can see your ribs through your t-shirt!" he smiled sadly.

Ron looked down at himself and shrugged.

"Yeah well, I've lost a bit of weight."

"You didn't have any weight to begin with, ya scrawny git!" Harry forced a laugh from his dry throat.

"Well, that is a good point," Ron conceded before nodding over his shoulder towards the kitchen. "You going to eat with us?"

Harry nodded, remembering Bill's words about everybody else eating encouraging Ron to join in.

"Definitely."

Just as they stepped into the kitchen there was a knock on the front do or.

"I'll get it," Ron said as he turned back and headed for the door while Harry took a seat beside Ginny at the newly laid breakfast table.

"D'you get many visitors?" Harry asked as he heard the front door opening.

"We had to block off the Floo network when Ron got ill. It aggravates the Nex Ultionis, that's what the condition's called, and he's not allowed to Apparate with it either."

"So he can't perform magic while he's like this?" Harry frowned.

"He can, he can do lots of stuff, but he can't really do anything where he's physically affected by magic."

"Oh right," Harry nodded before hearing a screeching exclamation that caused Bill's head to fall into his hands and Ginny to close her eyes and groan.

"Merlin's beard, look at you!" Molly Weasley's voice declared, "Have you looked in a mirror this morning or did they all break?"

"And you look beautiful too, mum," Ron's voice sounded resigned to the forthcoming rant.

Ron was pushed into the kitchen by his livid mother who glared at Bill with wild eyes and pointed at her youngest son.

"Look at him, look at the state of him, he looks terrible!"

"Mum, look at all of us," Bill protested, "we're all zombies this morning."

"So how did he get into this state?" she yelled as she shoved the hugely annoyed Ron forward again.

"Come on mum,"  Bill sighed, "we had a rough night, didn't we? Sit down and eat with us."

Mrs Weasley inspected the disaster area that was the kitchen table and took a long hard look at her dishevelled children before her eyes fell upon Harry. She cried out in shock and threw herself at him with such force that he almost fell off his chair.

"Harry! My dear, when did you get back? How did you find this place? Why didn't you let us know you were coming?"

Harry hugged Mrs Weasley and took a deep breath.

"Well, I was kicking this can along the north bank of the Thames..."

Chapter 2: Nex Ultionis

Ginny listened; still quiet.

Ron had spent the last half-hour in the bathroom and his sporadic vomiting noises had kept her up for another night. It hadn't woken Harry, though. Mind you, she thought, if he could sleep through Ron's snores all through school, then he could sleep through anything. She listened again; nothing. She was pleased it was over, but couldn't coax herself back to sleep until she heard Ron going back to bed, and he seemed to be taking his sweet time about it.

Ginny huffed and got out of bed, tiptoeing to avoid waking Harry. She stubbed her toe and almost swore out loud. She hobbled across the landing and into the bathroom.

"Oh, you poor sod," she whispered to herself.

Ron had fallen asleep with his head still hanging over the bowl. Ginny decided to try to pick him up and drag him to his room without waking him up. She gently pulled him back from the bowl and put her arm underneath to take the weight.

He woke up.

"Gin?" he mumbled, "Oh don't. I'll just go off again, go back to bed. I'm alright here."

"You'll catch cold in here," Ginny laughed.

"No, I'll puke if I go back. I swear," Ron protested lazily, "hanging over the bog is the only place I don't feel sick."

Ginny stroked Ron's back tenderly and wished she could leave him where he was comfortable. She couldn't, it was too risky to let him catch a cold in his condition.

"I know, but just try getting into bed. You really can't stay here. It'll be okay, Ron, I promise."

It was like having a conversation with somebody in a coma. She wondered if this was what it was like for people when she started mumbling away in the middle of the night. Harry had told her it was sweet and kind of funny, but Ginny hated it that she talked in her sleep. She was always worried that she might say something she didn't want to. Ginny stroked Ron's hair out of his face; his skin was clammy. If he didn't speak for a few seconds he'd drift back into a deep sleep again. He hadn't really woken up.

"Ron?"

"Go to bed, mum," he muttered.

"Oh thanks," Ginny snorted.

Bill appeared at the bathroom door.

"Ron, can you keep it down? This is the first night Luke's slept right through," he said in an apologetic tone.

"Oh, no more all night crying baby," Ron whimpered, "leave me here, don't wake him, please."

Ginny looked up at Bill.

"Is he still asleep, Bill?"

He nodded.

"I think all mum's fussing wore him out. He's totally out."

"Good. Now help me get him into bed."

"Ginny, no," Ron moaned.

"Keep it down or Luke'll hear," Bill warned.

"Bloody Luke," Ron muttered.

"Yes Ron, bloody screaming-and-yelling-until-your-head-splits-in-two-Luke, so keep it down," Bill whispered.

Ginny pulled Ron up to his feet. The first time she had realised that she was able to lift him all by herself, it had broken her heart. He was so light now that even in a heavy sleep she could haul him up with an arm over her shoulders. Bill took Ron's other arm and the two of them dragged him back to his bedroom.

"Ginny, pull back the sheets and mind the bucket," Bill said as he took Ron from her and lifted him clean off the ground in much the same way he would cradle his son.

Ginny grimaced as she picked up Ron's vomit bucket from the side of his bed.

"Yeah, treading in the vomit bucket is your thing," she grunted.

"I wanna sleep," Ron murmured.

"And you will," said Bill kindly but firmly, "you'll sleep in bed."

He tried to protest again but Ginny put her finger to her lips and cast him a steely glare. Ron lost heart and surrendered.

"Thanks, Ginny," Bill sighed as he set Ron down in his bed and rolled him onto his side before pulling the covers back over him, "be an angel and empty his bucket, would you?"

Ginny shuddered, a combination of the contents of the vomit bucket and her brother calling her an angel, and took the bucket from beside the bed to the toilet to empty it. She could hear Bill's soothing voice as he sat on the edge of Ron's bed and rubbed his back.

"It'll be fine, I promise, are you listening? You can sleep now."

Ginny returned with the rinsed-out bucket and put it beside Ron's bed. She and Bill said goodnight to each other and went back to their rooms. She smiled as she saw Harry still sleeping peacefully and snuggled back into bed and nuzzled her face into his side. She settled back into the warmth of his body and began to drift away.

Then she sat bolt upright, wide awake, and let out an agonised growl as the sound of the bucket filling echoed through the house. She heard Bill's door opening and his hurried footsteps running towards Ron's room.

"I'm really sorry, Ron, but you've got to be quiet."

Ron retched again.

"Shut up, you'll wake the baby!" Bill hissed, "C'mon, please be quiet. Please."

"I can't," Ron whimpered.

"Try!" Bill said, sounding very harsh considering how badly Ron was suffering at that moment; but he had to keep the baby undisturbed, otherwise Ron would be driven insane by the ear-piercing screams for the rest of the night.

"I can't sleep here," Ron said desperately, "I can't sleep lying down. I'm sorry."

"No, no, it's okay, it's okay," Bill was saying, sounding very guilty for having to be the bad guy that particular night, "I'll take you back to the bathroom, but we've got to put something warmer on you first, alright?"

Ginny listened but heard nothing. She assumed that Ron must have nodded.

"Right, you take some deep breaths and...here put these on. Hold on, your Quidditch ones are thicker...put 'em both on, normal socks first...another t-shirt and a jumper...which joggers are warmer, Ron?"

"I don't care," Ron said wearily.

"Here y'are then," Bill said softly.

Ginny could tell that Bill was appeasing Ron as best he could in an effort to give him some comfort and the rest of the house some peace that night. She strained to listen to the shuffling about and the pause for the bucket again, and heard Bill shushing Ron as he ran on tiptoe to the bathroom. Then she heard the nothing sound that was Bill sitting with him for a little while. A little while later Bill popped his head around Ginny's bedroom door and gave an involuntary chuckle.

"He's back again," Bill said with a shrug.

"He okay?"

Bill nodded before looking past Ginny at Harry's sleeping form.

"He asleep?"

"He can sleep through anything."

"Perfect partner for you, eh? You mouthy little madam!" Bill grinned.

"I'll try to keep it down," Ginny smiled back at him.

Bill left and closed her door behind him to block out his sister's sleep-talking a little. Ginny turned her face back towards Harry again and snuggled even further into him. He fidgeted and threw his arm over her body heavily.

She smiled and kissed him softly on the cheek before settling back down to sleep.

"I'm so glad you're back."

Ginny and Harry were making beetroot and cheddar sandwiches as a late breakfast. Ginny tore off a sheet of kitchen towel from the roll and set it down on the worktop.
"Put the beetroot on here first, it'll soak a lot of the juice up and we won't have pink bread."

"Or pink cheese," Harry added as he strained to get the jar of beetroot down from the top shelf, "Why do you people keep everything so high up?" he muttered.

"Because we have a baby crawling around who just loves to explore and put random things into his mouth - and also to aggravate short people!" Ginny grinned amiably.

Harry gave a tut and twisted the lid of the beetroot jar.

"I'm not short, you're all just giant freaks!" Harry said, just before the lid of the jar twisted off with a lot more ease then he had really been prepared for, "Shit!"

The beetroot juice slopped out over both of them.

"Oh, nice one, Harry!" Ginny gasped as she tugged at her stained sleeve.

"Quick, get it off," Harry said as he ran the tap and put the plug in the sink.

He had caught the worst of it. There were splash marks all over his t-shirt and a huge blotch down the left leg of his jeans. Ginny's top had spatter marks all the way across the front of it and she pulled it over her head and tossed it into the water. Harry did the same with his t-shirt before unzipping his jeans while Ginny took a yard of kitchen towel from the roll and bent down to mop up the spill from the floor.

Ron stood in the doorway with a huge grin plastered all over his face. Both Harry and Ginny froze and stared at him.

"Um," Harry said, "There was a slight beetroot incident."

Ron raised both eyebrows so high that they disappeared into his hair.

"That's a new one on me, I have to say."

"Yeah, Ron," Ginny rolled her eyes and huffed, "pickled beetroot is so erotic," she said with great sarcasm.

"It's the undiscovered aphrodisiac," Harry nodded just as Bill appeared behind Ron and frowned at this scene over Ron's shoulder.

"Y'know you've got some kind of stain on your bra there, Ginny?" Bill said as he pointed at his sister's beetroot-flecked body, much to Ron's amusement, while she stepped behind Harry to cover her modesty, "Oh, and one more thing, little sister, why are you and Harry half-naked in the kitchen?"

"We were making a sandwich," Harry said with an innocent shrug.

Ginny pulled a creased blouse out of the laundry basket and put it on while Bill shoved Ron through the door into the kitchen as his younger brother stretched his gangly limbs so widely that he almost took up the whole kitchen with his deep yawn.

"You eaten yet, Ron?" Bill said as he pulled something that looked like a jug of glow-in-the-dark paint out of the fridge and poured some into a glass.

"Nah," Ron said through the last of his yawn before slumping down in a chair at the kitchen table and resting his head in one of his hands, "I'll have something at lunch time."

"You always say that and you never bloody do," Ginny snapped as she stepped out from behind Harry to slam both her palms on the table top and lean over to stare at Ron accusingly.

"Well, if I'm not eating anything, I'd like to hear you explain all the crap I've been throwing up recently," Ron said with some annoyance.

"Here," Bill said as the glass of what could very well have been toxic waste was set before him, "drink that down and we'll leave you alone until lunch time."

Ron scrunched up his face.

"Ugh, the nutrient drink, do I have to? It's vile!"

"Cereal, toast, porridge..." Ginny began to list breakfast alternatives until Ron shuddered and reached for the glass and gulped it down with a revolted expression on his face.

"See, that wasn't so hard, was it?" Bill smiled as he ruffled Ron's hair, annoying him even more.

The front door was unlocked and Hermione stepped through and put her key away before calling out to the crowd in the kitchen.

"Only me! Is he ready to go yet?"

Everybody frowned at one another before turning or leaning to look down the hallway at Hermione. She gave a sigh of exasperation and looked to the heavens.

"If you tell me they changed the date of Ron's appointment and you all forgot to tell me again, I'm going to chew off my own fist!"

Bill, Ginny and Ron all lowered their heads guiltily; Harry mirrored their posture so as not to feel out of place.

"Don't eat your fist, Hermione," Ron said with an apologetic smile as he gestured to the jug full of glowing orange liquid, "we've got plenty of nutrient drink to go around."

Hermione shook her head and exhaled her resignation before breaking into a rueful grin.

"So when are you next in St Mungo's?" she asked Ron as she wriggled out of her jacket, hung it over the banister and walked down the hall to join the others in the kitchen.

"Tomorrow," Ron said, not looking enthused about his next treatment at all.

Hermione squeezed his shoulder before looking at the beetroot explosion site and the bread and cheese on the kitchen worktop.

"Oh," she said, pleasantly surprised, "are you eating this morning, Ron?"

Ron lifted his empty glass and shook it.

"Oh," her face fell, "well, at least you got something inside you. Where's Luke?"

"In his cage," Bill nodded in the direction of the living room.

"His playpen, Bill!" Hermione corrected with an exasperated sigh.

"Playpen, cage, same thing, different name!" Bill grinned.

Ron got to his feet and looked at Harry, who was still bare-chested and beetroot-stained.

"Are you just showing off or do you want to borrow something of mine until you move the rest of your gear into the house?"

"Oh yeah, thanks, mate," Harry said as he followed Ron out of the kitchen and up the stairs.

Harry noticed that Ron, who used to bound up a flight of stairs in three lolloping steps, was now much slower and steadier as he went. Ron looked back as he reached the top and cast Harry a smile before suppressing a burp behind his hand.

"'Scuse me," he said before heading to his bedroom, "sorry, that stuff is foul."

"That's okay," Harry smiled and watched as Ron opened his wardrobe and dropped himself down on his bed while Harry selected something to change into.

"You doing alright this morning, Ron?" Harry tried to ask as casually as he could manage.

"Yeah," Ron said as if it was a standard response rather then a considered answer, "I might actually have a kip for an hour or so before lunch, seeing as I'm up here."

Harry looked away, grabbed a red t-shirt out of Ron's wardrobe and pulled it over his head.

"Why not?" Harry said from within the item of clothing, "Ginny said you had a bit of a rough night."

When Harry's head popped through the neck of the t-shirt he saw Ron grinning and shaking his head.

"That was a good night, Harry. That was just...me wanting to sleep with my head in the toilet."

Harry forced a chuckle before the fake jollity left his face completely and he sat down on the edge of the bed beside Ron and looked him in the eye.

"This treatment really does you in then, yeah?" he asked.

Ron wrinkled his nose and gave a small nod and shrug of resignation.

"Well it's essentially poison, isn't it?" he mumbled, "I take a potion to break down the bezoar. I take another to neutralise the magical toxins that are trying to spread out of what's left of it. I have to take another potion to counter the effects the first two potions have when they combine with each other..."

"What effect is that?" Harry frowned.

"Basically they become toxic," Ron chortled.

Harry couldn't quite believe that Ron was laughing about his only cure being the ingestion of toxins over the course of, from what Ginny had told him, over a year before he had any chance of being cured. He understood now why all the Weasleys got sorted straight into Gryffindor, no questions asked: they weren't just brave but utterly remarkable. You could grit your teeth and bravely face a problem, but it was a whole other level of courage to face it with a smile on your face.

"So, three potions every time you go into St Mungo's for treatment, then?"

"No, there are four of 'em, they did tell me what the fourth one did, but quite frankly I was freaking out a bit by that point and had stopped paying proper attention."

Harry returned Ron's smile with one of his own. He deserved it.

"So," he said, deciding to get all the issues presently on his mind out in the open in one go, "you and Hermione."

"Don't start," Ron warned him.

"I'm not starting anything," Harry said defensively as he raised both his hands and took a step backwards, "I'm just talking about my two best friends."

"Oh yeah?" Ron raised an eyebrow with great cynicism.

"Yeah!" Harry said in his 'don't be such a prat' voice, "I'm not going to give you a hard time for breaking up with her."

"Well you'd better bleedin' not, otherwise you'd be a hypocrite, wouldn't you?" Ron said as he folded his arms across his chest.

"Indeed," Harry conceded, "but surely this whole thing would have been easier to handle with her then without her."

"I'm not without her, Harry," Ron said with a huff, "she's downstairs, did you forget? And she's taking me for my treatment tomorrow. I'm never away from her!"

"You know what I mean, Ron," Harry said seriously.

Ron looked down at the bedspread for a moment and mumbled a response into his chest.

"Yeah, well..." he shrugged.

"That's not bloody good enough!" Harry said as he hit Ron with one of his pillows, "Do you really think it's easier on her to be right across the road every night knowing the kind of hard time you're having?"

"Oh, and she'd feel bloody marvellous if she was sharing a bed with me every night, wouldn't she?" Ron grunted, "Puking all night long and keeping her up when she has work to go to first thing in the morning, what kind of bastard would I be to do that to her for a year and a half? Besides, it's humiliating to let her see me like that."

"And what must she feel like when she hears about you crawling out of your bed on your hands and knees in the middle of the night, completely alone, to fall asleep in a freezing cold bathroom wearing nothing but boxers with your head in the toilet?"

Ron had nothing to say to that. The two of them sat side by side on the edge of the bed and stared at the floor.

Chapter 3: Amusing Yourselves

"So let me get this straight in my head," Ginny said, the disbelief at what she was hearing from her newly returned boyfriend etched in the deep frown lines of her face, "you've never...like never had sex with anybody else but me?"

"No," Harry said, both slightly embarrassed and a little hurt that Ginny had had something of a 'social' life while he was away indefinitely, "I wasn't looking for anybody else."

"Well, neither was I, but blimey, Harry, you were gone for a really long time and a girl has needs!"

Harry squirmed in bed and looked down at the crumpled sheets rather then at his girlfriend. He'd been living at the house for over a week now and was still leaning new things about Ginny's life during the past year without him. Ginny lowered her head and lifted his chin. She was smiling sadly at him.

"It was just for fun, nothing serious, and I was always careful and everything," she said softly, "and it really wasn't all that frequent. It was just...more then none."

Harry broke into a reluctant smile. He exhaled a deep breath and met her gaze.

"So was it...like we were? Was it loving and...Ugh no, don't tell me, I don't want to know!" Harry waved his hands before his face and shook his head to attempt to clear away the images he now had in his head.

"It wasn't passionate or tender or loving like we were, Harry, it could never be anything like it was with you," Ginny cupped his face in her soft hand and brushed her lips against his before whispering into his mouth, "It was just fun and games, y'know?"

"No Ginny, I don't know!" Harry huffed, "That's the bloody point...I'm frigid without you!"

Ginny giggled at this and Harry felt himself blush slightly. She saw his discomfort and leaned back into his face to share a proper kiss with him. Her lips coaxed his apart before she began to explore his mouth with her tongue and Harry let out an ecstatic little whimper. Ginny laughed into the kiss and Harry put his hand behind her head and leaned over her a little, almost like the dip he saw ballroom dancers doing with their partners on television, and began to stroke her tongue with his.

Luke screaming from his bedroom broke the moment.

Harry groaned and Ginny rolled her eyes as they broke apart and stared at the closed bedroom door.

"Shhh, little man, c'mon petit chou, sing one of Mummy's songs with me eh? No crying, please, you'll wake up your Uncle Ron," Bill pleaded.

"He already has," Ron's rough voice mumbled from a little way away.

"Shit, I'm sorry, Ron. Go back to sleep, I'll get him down in a minute, I promise," Bill said wearily.

"Please don't sing," Ron begged him.

Ginny gave a laugh at this and Harry clamped his hand over her mouth and grinned while shushing her.

"It sends him back to sleep," Bill said, somewhat hurt by Ron's comment.

"Only because the poor sod wills himself into unconsciousness to shut you up!" Ron snapped.

Harry snorted and Ginny put her own hand over his mouth. They now sat, legs entwined, upon the bed with their hands over each other's mouths and their whole bodies shaking with giggles.

"Put a silencing charm on your door," Bill barked back, over his son's increase in volume.

"You put one on yours!" Ron grumbled.

"I can't you wazuck," Bill hissed, "I want to be able to hear you if you set up camp in the toilet again."

"Pervert!" Ron sneered, causing Harry and Ginny to really struggle to keep quiet.

"You have a perfectly good bucket to puke into in your bedroom, Ron, and you can stay in the warmth of your bed while you're doing it."

"I need to be crouched over something, I've told you a million times," Ron huffed. "Put the bucket on a pedestal and I'll kneel before it all night long but I can't lie flat and settle my stomach. It doesn't work that way."

Luke screamed even louder now.

"No, no, no, little cabbage, don't be like that. Daddy and Uncle Ron are just messing about. We're joking, aren't we, Ron?"

There was a long pause and then Ron's door slammed shut and the baby wailed like a police siren. Ginny had just about enough and grabbed her wand from the bedside table and flicked it at the door, casting her own silencing charm.

"Wow," Harry said as the amusement left his face, "That was... It's not like Bill and Ron to get stroppy with each other."

"It is since the baby came along," Ginny shrugged, "and Ron's tetchy of a night anyway."

"Yeah," Harry gave a nod and looked at the closed bedroom door.

"Now where were we?" Ginny smiled as she snaked her arms around Harry's neck seductively.

"We were distracting me from the fact that you've been sexually active and I haven't," Harry said bluntly.

Ginny let out a growl of frustration and threw back her head to look at the ceiling.

"Why does this matter?"

"Because you're more...experienced then me now," Harry said, humiliation creeping into his tone, "We used to be just as experienced as each other and now you, I dunno, know stuff I don't."

Ginny looked at him and her face was spilt by the most mischievous smile he had ever seen.

"What? You think I've gone all kinky?"

Harry shuddered.

"I don't want to think about you being...anything with anybody else."

"Are you worried that I've learned some new tricks and I might break your fragile little repressed body with them?" she giggled.

"This isn't funny!" Harry declared. "You're not funny!"

Ginny sat back on her heels and began to stroke her hands up Harry's thigh slowly.

"What if I had a lot of kinks in me but I was saving them all up for you?" she said as her fingers glided over the surface of his skin.

"What?" Harry said, tensing up with excitement and just a small amount of terror.

Ginny pushed him down, flat against the bed, and straddled him on her knees.

"You need to understand that sex isn't just about passion and gentle loving tenderness. And that doesn't mean that the sex should be shallow; it can also be playful and fun."

Harry stared up into her wickedly twinkling eyes.

"You sound like an instructional video," he said unsteadily.

"A what?" Ginny frowned before shaking her head. "Doesn't matter."

She leaned down over him and pressed her lips against his, stroking her hands over his body until she could feel that Harry was more excited then nervous. Looking greatly satisfied, she climbed off him, marched across the bedroom and opened her wardrobe to bend over and rummage inside.

"Um," Harry swallowed, "I'm not allowed on any big apparatus, I've got a note."

Harry shifted up a little and saw Ginny was searching through her various shoes; his eyes widened so much he thought he was going to need bigger glasses.

"Oh shit, you're not going to spank me with a pair of white stilettos, are you," he joked nervously.

Ginny glared at him over her shoulder as she sat on the floor and wrestled something onto her feet.

"Do I look like the kind of woman who owns a pair of white stilettos?" she said as the sound of a zipper cut through the air.

She got to her feet, strode back over to the bed, and stepped up onto the mattress. She stood over him, one leg on either side of Harry's hips, and put her hands on her own hips with a naughty smile on her face. He made a sound. It was something between a high-pitched squeal and a gurgle. Harry had no idea what expression he had on his face, but Ginny seemed to find it funny. He looked up at her as she stood there, astride his horizontal body, in black thigh-high leather boots and nothing else.

As she giggled down at him, a lock of red hair came tumbling forward onto her face and Harry gasped like a kid on Christmas morning.

"Wow!"

"Aw, you're so sweet," she laughed.

Harry huffed at this comment.

"Calling me sweet doesn't do anything for the mood, y'know, Ginevra?"

She scowled at him before shaking her head and grinning wickedly.

"You're so easily impressed," she teased before spinning the nightie she had removed around between her hands until it formed a kind of rope and cracking it in the air like a whip, causing the fabric to make a loud snapping sound, "and don't call me Ginevra!"

"Okay," Harry said breathlessly as she knelt over him.

"See," she whispered, "naughty, kinky, fun sex for beginners. Pay attention now and do what the teacher says."

Ginny sat bolt upright and looked around for a couple of seconds before turning onto her side, dragging all the covers off Harry and settling back down to sleep on her side.

"It's all just an excuse," she mumbled.

Harry pulled himself up and stared down at her.

"What?" he asked her.

"It's all for someone else," she said, muffled into her pillow.

Harry rolled his eyes and he realised that Ginny was off in dreamland.

"Give me some of the covers, you." He pulled at the blanket, but Ginny had hold of it in tightly balled fists.

"I can understand what you're thinking," she said clearly, as if she was having a conversation over dinner.

"Oh for f-" Harry sighed and got out of bed.

He pulled a pillow off the bed and carried it out of the room. He paused to take his cloak from where it hung on the banister and stumbled in the darkness to the sofa. He settled down and pulled the cloak over his body as he lay down in the foetal position.

As he began to drift off again he heard a muffled murmur filter through the floorboards above him.

"How the hell have I been sleeping through that?" he huffed.

"She only does it when she's got stuff on her mind," Ron said, making Harry jump upright with such speed that he almost toppled off the sofa.

"Shit, Ron!" Harry put his hand to his chest and exhaled the sharp gasp he had drawn in on hearing his best friend's voice so unexpectedly. "What the hell are you doing down here?"

Ron lifted up a steaming mug and smiled.

"Something incredible has happened, watch this," Ron lifted the mug to his lips and sipped a little of the mug's contents before lowering it again and looking as proud as he had after winning the Quidditch Cup for the first time, "I can swallow!"

Harry gave Ron a smile of pity and shuffled back on the sofa, patting the space where his feet had been for Ron to sit down.

"That's great, Ron," he said as he watched the painfully thin figure sit before him, "what is it you've got?"

"Hot chocolate," he said as he looked into his steaming mug, "I usually can't swallow 'till midday but I just got this craving for chocolate and thought I'd give it a go."

"Cool," Harry said, feeling bad at just how wonderful it was to see Ron able to drink something in the middle of the night, "You should try it with soup, Ron."

Harry knew that his suggestion was totally transparent - he had joined the household quest to nag Ron to eat at every opportunity, but he didn't care.

"Nah," Ron shuddered, "it's too thick."

"Well, maybe a broth?" Harry tried before Ron turned and fixed him with something close to a glare.

"Harry, don't."

"Sorry," he said as he watched Ron's face soften again and take another sip of his hot chocolate.

"'S okay," Ron mumbled after he swallowed.

They sat in silence for a few minutes before Ron looked back at Harry with a smile breaking across his face.

"I'm thinking of going to see Fred and George tomorrow, well, today now, just to amuse myself, y'know?"

"Yeah?" Harry grinned.

Ron nodded and set his empty mug down on the floor at his feet.

"They're always good for a laugh," Ron said as he sat back against the sofa and rested his head against the cushion behind him, "and they don't treat me different."

Harry nodded. It must be nice for Ron to have somewhere to go where he wasn't being pestered or fussed over.

"But you're feeling better these days," Harry said, "Everybody'll start worrying less soon enough, won't they?"

Ron raised his eyebrows cynically.

"You don't think so?" Harry asked.

"Well it's not the being ill or getting better that's the problem, really. To be honest with you I felt a hell of a lot better in myself before I started getting treated."

Harry sighed at this. It must feel awful to know that the only thing that can save your life also makes you feel so sick that you start wishing you were back the way you were, dying but content. As soon as he had thought that, he shuddered.

"Cold?" Ron frowned at him.

"Um, a bit. I think there must be a draught from the fireplace or something."

Ron looked over at the fireplace before looking back at Harry with a shrug.

"I can't feel anything."

"Maybe just lack of sleep," Harry offered his best friend up another lie.

Ron nodded.

"Ginny scratched me in her sleep once, when we were little," he said as he ran his hand through his hair thoughtfully. "She drew blood, too. And she punched the bedside table and broke her hand. You might want to wear some kind of helmet to bed, Harry."

"Well she's not really being violent, she's just a chatterbox!"

Ron smiled at this before clearing his throat and getting up from the sofa.

"Yeah well, like I said, she does that when she's worried. It's probably my fault."

"Don't be daft," Harry said with a tut, although he did feel that this was probably the truth.

"I'll see you at breakfast," Ron said before carrying his mug out to the kitchen and dumping it in the sink, "and do me a favour, tell Bill and Hermione you saw me drinking that, it might make 'em lay off me."

"Of course," Harry nodded.

"'Night, mate," Ron said before setting off up the stairs again.

"Yeah, see ya," Harry smiled as he watched him go.

He snuggled back down into the sofa and closed his eyes. It was kind of comforting that Ron was still Ron despite everything. He may be a shadow of himself physically, Harry thought, but at least he's still all there on the inside. He thought of Ron at the twin's shop in Diagon Alley, laughing and joking as if nothing was wrong, and smiled to himself.

He felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Ron?" Harry said as he opened his eyes.

"What are you sleeping down here for?" Ginny said as she leaned over Harry with concern.

"You didn't seem to want to share the sheets...or the conversation," Harry chuckled wearily.

Ginny rolled her eyes.

"Sorry, what was I on about?"

"I can't even remember," Harry shrugged with a yawn.

Ginny moved around the sofa to squeeze onto it beside him.

"I woke up and you weren't there and Ron's bedroom door was wide open," she said as she stroked his hair, "I thought you were stuck in the bathroom with him. Then he came up and went to bed and you still hadn't come back. I missed you."

Harry smiled lazily and Ginny snuggled into him and rested her head upon his chest. He gripped the cloak around his neck tightly.

"Get your own cloak," he mumbled.

"Won't bother, not cold," Ginny murmured back.

Within a minute they were both sound asleep and snuggling beneath his cloak. Ginny didn't say another word.

"When I grow too old to dream..." Ron sang to little Luke as he bounced him in his arms and smiled as the baby gurgled happily back at his uncle, "...I'll have you to remember..."

Harry caught Hermione surreptitiously watching this little scene out of the corner of her eye as she magically cleared the kitchen table and put away the dishes. Ginny had seen the same thing and had nudged Harry to share a grin.

"...When I grow to old to dream," Ron sang as he freed one hand and put it to his lips," your kiss," he kissed his fingers and blew a kiss to Hermione which Luke mimicked with an amused cackle, "will live in my heart."

Hermione had pretended to catch both kisses and put them in her pocket, much to Luke's delight, but had turned away quickly when Ron and Luke focused their attention back on each other and wiped her face with the back of her hand as discreetly as she could. Harry felt so sorry for her at that moment that he just wanted to go to her and give her a big hug, but Ginny took his hand and squeezed it.

She silently communicated that she was going to talk to her when she could do it tactfully and away from certain redheads.

"So kiss me, my sweet," Ron went on as Bill came into the kitchen, having shaved, and shook his head ruefully, "and so let us part, and when I grow too old to dream your kiss will live in my heart."

Luke squealed happily before reaching up and grabbing Ron's nose with a wicked cackle. Ron snorted and blew a raspberry into his nephew's chubby palm, causing the baby to giggle and squirm in his uncle's arms.

"That's what I get for singing to ya, is it? I dunno why I bother!" Ron grinned before moving to hand the baby back to his father.

Bill took a step back and held up his hands as if Luke was a weapon of some sort.

"I don't want him, you keep him," Bill pouted much to his son's delight, "Uncle Ronnie slagging off my singing last night and you screaming at me at all hours and now you're both all happy and having a sing-song without me...so be it!" Bill sat down at the table and picked up the Daily Prophet, "I wash my hands of both of you."

Ron sniggered and whispered something to Luke before sticking out his bottom lip as far as it would go, scrunching up his face, and hunching his shoulders. Luke did the same thing and pointed at Bill.

"Grumpy daddy!"

Ron nodded before putting his nose to Luke's tiny button nose and ordering, "Gi's a kiss!"

Luke squealed with laughter again before planting a slobbery kiss on Ron's face, "Yeuch!" Ron declared, which only made Luke happier.

"Auntsie Gin!" Luke said as he pointed to Ginny.

Ron carried him over to Ginny and she leaned forward and closed her eyes tightly while Luke kissed her on the end of the nose wetly.

"Ugh," Ginny protested playfully, "not a nose kiss!"

Luke was already leaning into Harry and dribbling quite heavily. Ron's face was a cross between heartfelt apology and suppressed hysteria at this.

"Um, you want to kiss Uncle Harry too?" Ginny said as she wiped the drool from her nose.

"Gi's kiss!" Luke hissed as he stretched out his arms.

Harry shrugged and leaned forward to feel a slimy smear of goo trail across his cheek.

"Lovely Luke," Ron strained not to laugh too hard, "I bet he'll remember that one for a long time."

"And then some!" Harry nodded as he wiped his face with his sleeve.

"Auntsie Minminee!" Luke cried out.

Ron sighed deeply and rolled his eyes as he carried Luke over to his next victim.

"You want a kiss Luke?" Hermione said as she turned to face him and put his hands on her hips.

"Kisssssss!" Luke said happily as he extended his podgy arms in Hermione's direction.

"Are you going to use Mummy's manners afterwards?" Hermione said, almost like a warm and friendly version of Professor McGonagall.

Luke nodded and Harry frowned.

"Mummy's manners?" he mumbled to Ginny, who shushed him and told him to watch and listen.

Hermione leaned forward and puckered up. Luke wiped his wet mouth and gave her the nicest little peck on the lips before leaning backwards again and beaming.

"What do you say?" Hermione asked him.

"Mer-cee," Luke said proudly.

"Bien!" Hermione said with a proud smile.

Harry felt Ginny curling her arm around one of Harry's and whispering into his ear.

"Hermione's been teaching him French, y'know? For Fleur."

Harry nodded and looked back at the baby who would live the same kind of life he had, a life of never knowing a mother's love, and sighed before looking over to Bill, who was watching this from over the top of his newspaper with a distant smile on his face. As he saw Ron and Luke moving back to the table, he turned his attention back to the article he was pretending to read.

"You wanna give daddy a kiss?" Ron asked Luke.

Luke poked out his tongue and crumpled his little face.

"Yuck!"

"Yuck?" Ron said, pulling a dramatically shocked face.

"Grumpy daddy," Luke said, still looking as if his face needed a good iron.

"It might cheer him up if you give him a kiss," Ron said with a sly look in his eyes.

"No!" Luke snapped as he put his two little hands over Ron's mouth.

Ron blew another big raspberry into the hands and Luke giggled wildly at the same moment there was a knock at the door.

"I'll get it," Ron said as he carried the baby down the hallway towards the front door.

"If it's Mum, give her the baby and run!" Bill called after him.

Ginny laughed before nodding over to Hermione; Harry smiled and watched as she approached his subdued friend and led her outside into the back yard for a witch-to-witch chat.

"Feds!" Luke was yelling happily.

"Ron, you look like shit!" Fred's voice declared.

"I do, don't I?" Ron replied, "Thank fuck for you, that's all I can say."

"Language in front of baby, please!" Bill declared with exasperation.

There were footsteps growing louder down the hallway now and the sound if the door closing behind them.

"If I have to hear how much better I'm looking one more time I'll blow my top," Ron was muttering as they entered the kitchen.

Bill got to his feet and took the baby from Ron.

"Kiss Feds," Luke protested.

"No more kissing," Bill said as he sat back down with his son.

Harry saw George looking up at the ceiling and shaking his head.

"Hi George, what's up?" Harry smiled.

"What's up?" George said with a tut. "My own nephew thinks we're both called Fred, that's what's up."

"What can I say?" Fred shrugged gleefully from behind his twin, "I'm the definitive one!"

George scowled before grumbling to Harry.

"He can speak French but he can't say George, it's good to feel wanted, I can tell ya!"

Harry was giving George a consolatory pat on the arm while Ron explained to Fred that he was planning to come and see them later on.

"You eaten yet?" George suddenly demanded in a no-nonsense manner.

"No he hasn't," Bill said disapprovingly.

Fred's posture changed so much that he seemed to physically transform into Mrs Weasley. Ron sank down into a chair at the table and sighed.

"Seriously, I won't be able to hold it down."

"You've got treatment when?" Fred said in a clipped tone.

"Eleven," Ron answered.

"Great, we'll drive you."

The kitchen was completely silent for a full five seconds before Ron blinked, shook his head and leaned in closer to Fred.

"Huh?"

"We're going to drive you to St Mungo's," George said nonchalantly, "we bought a Muggle car."

Ron and Bill stared at each other in shock before turning to look back at the twins, who stood defiantly shoulder-to-shoulder.

"You can't drive," Bill said eventually.

"Yes we can," they said together.

"You can't drive a Muggle car," Ron clarified.

"Yes we can," the twins repeated in unison.

"Um," Harry stepped in to the conversation, "a Muggle car on Muggle roads...with other Muggles?"

"Uh-huh," they nodded.

"No way!" Bill declared firmly.

"Why not?" Fred said, trying to look offended but not quite knowing how just yet.

"You'll crash!" Bill snapped.

"No we won't," George said with a tut and a patronising laugh.

"Yes you will," Harry and Ron said together.

"Look, we got this bloody car so we could help out and take Ron for his treatments, it's non-magical transport, and you," Fred pointed into Ron's face, "are you really telling me that you like coming home from your treatment on public transport?"

Ron looked at Bill and winced. Harry had gone along with Ron for his last dose of potions and had had a truly unpleasant journey back on the tube with a sweating, shivering and vomiting Ron that he hoped neither of them would ever have to repeat again.

"He's not getting into a car with you two," Bill said adamantly.

Harry put his hand on Ron's shoulder and looked at the twins, who were about to blow up at Bill for assuming they'd be careless with their sick brother.

"You have to take a Muggle test before you can drive on the roads, y'know?" Harry jumped in to defuse the argument.

The twins looked as if Harry had just dealt their winning card, and plunged their hands into their jackets to pull out a piece of paper each and unfurl them in front of Bill's face.

"We know...we took...we passed!" Fred said smugly.

"You both took a Muggle test to...for..." Ron stammered.

"Yeah," George nodded with a smile, "we did."

Bill got to his feet and cradled the gurgling Luke to himself before snarling into Fred's ear as he passed him to take the baby into the living room and put him in his playpen.

"You be careful with him."

Ginny and Hermione came back into the kitchen at the same moment Bill had left it. Ginny pointed out towards the front door and looked outraged.

"Some git's dumped a big pile of scrap metal outside our house!"

Fred and George cleared their throats and looked back down at Ron.

"So are you ready to go, Ronniekins?"

Chapter 4: Sniffles

Harry and Ginny were stumbling home after a night out on the town and they were both a little worse for wear. As it turned out, they were the same kind of drunk, the giggly affectionate kind.

After Ginny had dropped her wand and then her key and then fallen over attempting to pick both items up, Harry decided to knock on the door instead. Harry hauled Ginny back to her feet while she cackled to herself about kicking her shoes into the mud and 'doing a Harry' and the front door swung open. It was Mrs Weasley. She didn't look happy.

"Oooh, I'm in trouble!" Ginny said with an enormous grin.

Mrs Weasley snorted and stepped aside.

"Well, come in, then," she snapped.

"Ah, mum," Ginny said as she stepped inside and threw her arms around her mother's rigid body, falling into a cuddle, "have you lost weight? You look beautiful. I hope when I'm your age..."

"Get inside and don't even think about finishing that sentence, Ginny Weasley!" the irate-looking witch said as she pushed her daughter away from her and stood her upright before cautiously letting her go.

Harry fought not to laugh as he followed his tipsy girlfriend through to the living room where they were hit full in the face by an eye-watering vapour in the air.

"Woah, what the hell is that smell?" Harry reeled as he put his hand to his face to shield himself from the fumes.

Ron appeared from beneath a tea-towel, unleashing a cloud of steam.

"Eucalyptus, camphor oil and cumin seeds," he said muggily, "I've got a..." Ron suddenly had a small coughing fit, which worsened as he began to laugh.

"A cough?" Harry ventured a guess.

"A cold actually," Ron managed to strain as his eyes watered from the menthol fumes.

"Coughing's just like a bonus then?" Harry smiled sympathetically.

Harry's remark was about to be answered, but another coughing fit pushed ahead of Ron's words. This second wave lasted considerably longer.

"Merlin, Ron, pull that towel back over before your insides come out," Bill shouted over the splutters.

"The Ronald Weasley coughing extravaganza starring...Ronald Weasley!" Ginny said with a flourish of her arms.

"Don't," Ron begged his sister as another laugh-cum-cough seized his whole body, "mum, tell her to stop making me laugh."

"She's not making you laugh, she's making you cough," Mrs Weasley said as she cast her jovial daughter a disapproving look.

She took a seat beside her sick son and pulled the towel back over his head.

"So, drunken sister of mine," Bill grinned, "where have you two been?"

"We went to a party," Harry said, catching sight of himself in the mirror, realising that he had a dopey expression on his face, and trying to shake it off.

"Well, we knew somebody would be up when we came home," Ginny said as she tripped and fell into an armchair, trying to make it appear as if she had meant to sit down all along, "'Cause, y'know?" Ginny shrugged and pointed at Ron, bent over the bowl of home-made cold remedy beneath a tea towel, "somebody's always up in this house."

"So you thought it would be acceptable for you to stagger in and wake the whole household because of that, did you?" Mrs Weasley said as her jaw stiffened and her lips were pulled into a tight, scowl.

"'S my fault, Mrs Weasley," Harry decided to see if his golden-boy immunity still worked with his surrogate mother.

"Well, you should be ashamed of yourself then, both of you!" she barked.

Harry cringed and hung his head. Obviously golden-boy immunity was overruled by protectiveness of an unwell baby boy in the world of Mrs Weasley.

"Oh come on, mother," Ginny scoffed, "If it's so late, then why are you all still up? Why are you even here this late anyway," Ginny suddenly frowned in confusion and waved a hand towards her mother before looking across to Hermione, who was sitting at Ron's other side, "you too. Isn't it time you both went home instead of having a go at us for coming home late?"

"Ginny, don't be so s  odding rude!" Bill hissed from where he stood before the fireplace.

"What?" Ginny protested with indignance.

"Hermione has been taking care of your brother all day, she missed work today to see to him," Mrs Weasley said while Hermione pinked a little in the cheeks and looked down into her lap, "and I will be staying here tonight in case he needs me."

"Mum, I told you..." Ron began to pull the towel back away from his head but his mother pushed his head back down and slapped the back of his hand away from the tea towel, "Ow!"

"Stay under the towel, Ronnie!" she ordered.

While Mrs Weasley silently seethed and Ginny glared back at her grumpily, Harry sat down on the arm of the sofa uncomfortably and shared a wary glance with Hermione. They smiled at each other briefly before Bill cleared his throat.

"So this party, was it an old friend from school, Ginny?"

"What?" Ginny said as she slowly shifted her focus from her mother to Bill, "Oh yeah, Lisa, she likes to start her parties late because she's an insomniac."

Mrs Weasley blinked on hearing this before frowning.

"I had that when I was pregnant with Ronnie. What does that have to do with throwing late-night parties?"

Everybody looked at Mrs Weasley in bewildered confusion; even Ron's head turned beneath the tea towel, and Hermione broke the silence with a nervous correction.

"Actually I think you might mean anaemia, Mrs Weasley."

The entire room erupted into laughter; Mrs Weasley shook her head and sighed before breaking into a smile of resignation that now even Hermione was showing her up as the batty old fool she sometimes must have felt she was. She sighed and shrugged at Hermione. This seemed to make her feel a little better about correcting her mistake and she smiled back. Ron's head emerged from beneath the towel again to join in with the levity.

"Get back in there, Ron," his mother ordered.

"I can't," Ron moaned, "it's giving me a headache."

"It's not this that's giving you a headache, all that coughing is," she fussed as she tried to push his head back down over the steaming bowl on his lap.

"No, I'm alright now," Ron said, clearing his throat.

On hearing this, Mrs Weasley leapt to her feet.

"Good, so I can get you something to eat now."

The confrontation with Ginny seemed to have upset Mrs Weasley a little more then she wanted any of her children to notice, and she looked as though she needed a distraction. She was on her feet and scurrying for the door to get Ron something to eat when he called after her.

"Oh no mum, my guts are turning over just thinking about it," he shuddered.

Harry slid down into Mrs Weasley's vacated seat, grabbed Ron by the shoulders and pretended to shake him melodramatically.

"EAT...SOME...FOOD! I beg you!"

"Get off," Ron laughed wheezily, "or I'll reveal your horrible secret."

"You wouldn't dare," Harry said defiantly before leaning in close and whispering, "Which one?"

Ron looked smugly back at him.

"Mrs Weasley," Harry called out to the kitchen, "a four-course meal for my dear friend Ron, he asked for it."

"Right away," she called back in a singsong voice.

"No mum, I really can't," Ron called through the open door desperately, "I'm not joking, I mean it."

Harry's smile faded a little and he gave Ron a slight nudge to make sure he was all right. He smiled back at him before looking back at the door where his mother was now standing with an apron tied around her waist.

"Not on top of this," Ron pleaded with her before motioning down to the bowl on his lap, "I can't."

His mother gave him a nod of understanding before swallowing and then looking from Harry to Ginny and straightening out the creases in her apron briskly.

"What about you two?"

"Um..." Harry said as he looked at Ginny. Frankly, he was starving, but he didn't want to interfere with this apparent peace-offering between mother and daughter.

"We could share a plate of chips, I suppose," Ginny said with a small shrug as she glanced back at her mother apprehensively.

"Alright, but you'll have to eat in the kitchen," she said as she turned to leave.

Ginny smiled and nodded; her mother seemed to loosen up again, the tension having been broken.

"No, it's okay," Ron said, stopping his mother in her tracks, "they can eat in here."

"Are you sure?" Ginny asked him.

"Yeah, it's fine," Ron nodded.

Twenty minutes later, Harry and Ginny were knelt around the coffee table in the living room eating their large platter of chips while the rest of the family listened to a late-night news bulletin on the radio. They still enjoyed the novelty of not hearing a list of dead and wounded as they used to have to do during the war. Mrs Weasley was looking ready to turn in, Bill was upstairs checking on baby Luke and Hermione was still refusing to go home until Ron had gone to bed.

Harry glanced up to look at his best friend and noticed that he was beginning to take slow, deep breaths. This was something Harry had grown used to ever since he had moved into the house. This was what Ron did whenever he was feeling nauseated and trying to control it. Harry leaned across the coffee table and put his hand on Ron's knee.

"You alright there, Ron?"

At that, Ron put his hand to his mouth and leapt to his feet. The bowl with its concoction toppled over and spilled all over the rug while Ron ran into the tiny downstairs toilet, followed by Hermione.

"It's not your fault, you two," she called behind her as she went, "he said you could eat in here."

"Yes dears, finish your supper," Mrs Weasley smiled before crowding into the tiny downstairs toilet with Hermione.

Harry could see that the younger witch was behind Ron, rubbing his back and murmuring encouragement.

"That's it, that's it Ron, let it all out," she said while Ron bowed over the toilet bowl, his back arching every few seconds, "Give it time. It'll pass, you're okay."

Ron coughed and spat into the bowl before reaching out and shoving Hermione backwards and out the door blindly.

"Sit back down Hermione, go and talk to Harry and Ginny," he said as Hermione stepped back into the cupboard-sized toilet and put her hands on her hips, "Go back into the other room."

"I'm not going anywhere, Ron," she said fiercely, "What on earth makes you think I would?"

"I don't want you to see me puke, okay?" Ron yelled before the strain on his throat caused him to have another coughing fit.

"Oh," Hermione said quietly as she seemed torn between crouching beside him and giving him a cuddle and running as far away from him as possible. Instead she chose to reach out for him to gave a brief pat on the back before stepping backwards out of the toilet and watching him from the hallway with her arms hugging herself, "I don't think any less of you just because I see you like th-" she began to say shakily.

"Get out!" Ron snapped and Hermione jumped and turned right into Mrs Weasley's body.

The stout woman grabbed Hermione tightly and enveloped her in a hug that almost seemed to swallow her whole. She stroked the back of her bushy brown head and swayed from side to side while Hermione seemed to struggle not to cry. Bill had come back down the stairs to order everybody to keep their voices down when he saw the scene before him. He and took in a deep breath before marching purposefully past his mother and Hermione into the toilet.

"Ron?" he said forcefully.

"Sit down, Bill," Ron turned and looked up at his brother, "you know me, I'm here for the night now."

"No you're not, up," Bill ordered, "get up. Get your head out of there and get up. You've hardly eaten, so you've got nothing to puke, have you?"

Hermione drew a shuddering breath as she pulled away from Mrs Weasley and the two witches frowned at Bill's tough tactics.

"I can't eat, Bill," Ron's ragged voice responded.

"Yes, you can," Ginny shouted from the living room, "Cheese! When he's like this he can only keep cheese down. We sat up one night and he ate a whole brick of it."

Bill looked from Ginny back to Ron.

"Cheese? D'you think you could keep it down?"

There was a pause, followed by the sound of Ron spitting into the toilet bowl, before he lifted his head and nodded.

While Ron was being force-fed cheese by the ton, Ginny and Harry had gone up to bed and were sharing a little pillow talk.

"So why blue?" Harry frowned.

"It just took my fancy," Ginny smiled with a shrug, "but mum would go spare if I did it."

"Can't you just change it magically for the night and then put it back the way it was?"

"Do you know anybody who hasn't messed up a charm like that?"

Harry thought back to his yellow eyebrow and shook his head.

"I'd ask Hermione, but she has this thing about hair vanity, it's a sensitive spot for her," Ginny sighed before laying her head upon Harry's bare chest, "I really wish I were like Tonks and just be able to change colour like that," she clicked her fingers.

Harry chuckled and kissed the top of her head.

"So what different colours would you want to try?"

"Nearly all of them, except pink," she said with a look of distaste.

"Blonde?" Harry asked with arched eyebrows.

Ginny shook her head with great conviction.

"No way, too bimbo for me!"

Harry pretended to be disappointed and Ginny dug her fingers into his side, making him let out a girlish laugh and squirm away from her.

"No tickling, that's not fair!" Harry said warningly, "Otherwise all truces are off and I'm free to blow raspberries on your bottom to my hearts content."

"That was never agreed!" Ginny warned him before he grabbed her arm, her finger still waggling at him on the end of it and pinned it to the mattress beneath him.

"I can blow raspberries wherever I see fit," Harry declared, "you broke the tickle/raspberry agreement so I no longer have to abide by the rules of said agreement," Harry declared, victoriously.

"Oh, watch it, Potter," Ginny said with wide eyes, "you sounded a lot like Percy just then!"

Harry took in a deep breath, lowered his face down between Ginny's bare breasts and blew an enormous raspberry. Ginny cackled and thrashed about beneath him as he covered her body with big wet raspberries until she managed to give Harry a dig in the ribs and then throw him off her. As Harry wiped his wet mouth and chuckled proudly Ginny launched herself on top of him and pinned him down with that wicked look on her face.

"Revenge, revenge, revenge...oh, what can a girl do to get her revenge?" Ginny rocked back and forth on Harry's hips as she looked to the ceiling and thought aloud.

"You can keep doing that if you like," Harry grinned.

Ginny stopped rocking and leaned right over Harry to look at him nose to nose.

"I think you could do with some colour, Potter," she said gleefully.

"No!" Harry said, his eyes wide, "whatever you're thinking, no!"

Ginny looked down at Harry's groin before her face lit up and she looked back into his eyes in a way that made him fear for his penis.

"I could turn your pubic hair green and make it look as if your Willy's got the sniffles!" she grinned so widely that her whole face seemed to glow.

"No," Harry said fearfully, "No green pubes Ginny, not on me, not on you...not on anyone. There will be no green pubes! You said yourself you couldn't pull of a charm like that properly and this is my bollocks we're talking about."

Ginny seemed delighted at the reaction she had coaxed out of him and lowered herself down to silence his protests with a deep kiss. By the time Ginny pulled back Harry was looking dazed and his mouth was still hanging open before he came back to his senses.

"Green's not so bad," he said eventually.

Ginny rolled off him and wriggled tightly into his side as she curled her arms around him.

"Would you consider white instead?" Harry asked, "It'd be nice to know what it'll look like when I'm an old man."

Ginny's whole body shook with laughter.

"I went out with an albino once actually," she found herself confessing, before wincing and hoping that Harry wouldn't get all strange at this talk of her sex-life without him.

"Really?" Harry said as he sat up on his elbow.

"Yeah," Ginny nodded and waited for Harry's next response.

"This thing with that is," Harry said with a thoughtful look on his face, "they have great hair and beautiful skin but the eyelashes really freak me out. They're really long and really white!"

"Really?" Ginny smirked.

"Reeeeally!" Harry said, disregarding Ginny's sarcasm and resuming his ramble, "I try not to be one of those people who stare but you can't not look, can you? I saw a Japanese Albino girl on my travels and she was the most fascinating person I had ever seen in my life...and I've seen Hagrid!"

Ginny snorted at this.

"But the lashes didn't look right on her eyes and when they blink, God, it's like a pair of butterflies flapping about her face. How it didn't get on her nerves I'll never know."

Ginny propped herself up on her elbow now.

"Well, do your eyelashes get on your nerves?" she asked him.

"No, but I can't see mine," Harry declared as if Ginny was some kind of idiot for saying such a thing.

"Well I'm sure they can't see theirs either."

"Well, if you're gonna use logic," Harry grumbled.

The following morning Harry and Ginny had come down to breakfast, far too late, together.

"Morning, Ron," Harry said cheerily.

Ron gave him a halfhearted nod and poured himself a glass of the glowing nutrient drink with a scowl of disgust at his own actions.

"How's your cold?" Harry asked again, determined to maintain his jovial manner and infect everybody around him with it.

Ron shook his head and pointed to his throat, mouthing the words 'I can't'.

"You've lost your voice?" Ginny said, stepping forward and holding Ron's face in her hands with a serious expression on her own, "When's the celebratory party?"

Ron slapped Ginny on the arm and she cackled before giving him a hug of apology.

"I haven't lost it," Ron croaked before putting his hand to his throat and wincing.

"Oh sorry," Ginny said as she broke away from him, "it hurts?"

"D'you want me to get someone? Hermione maybe?" Harry suggested.

Ron shook his head just as Bill walked in.

"Hermione's gone to work," he said as he opened a paper packet of something that stunk just as badly as Ron's steam treatment the night before, "She did give me something called Fisherman's Friend to give to you though."

"Do fishermen have a lot of friends then?" Ginny frowned as Bill popped one of the tiny little stone coloured things into his mouth and immediately spat it back out onto the floor, "Apparently not!"

"Ugh," Bill said as he scraped at his tongue with his fingers, "whoever makes these must really hate fishermen to have named such a foul tasting sweet after them!"

Ron was really struggling not to laugh at his revolted brother and managed to limit his amusement to one painful cough.

"Don't make him laugh, you two," Harry said sympathetically, "I'll get you some Tunes or Lockets or something Ron, they're sweeter and you can get cherry and blackcurrant flavours."

Ron gave a silent nod and forced the nutrient drink down his throat while Harry and Ginny put on their jackets to head out for the day.

"See ya, Ron," Ginny waved.

"Yeah, keep it down, mate," Harry grinned as he held the front door open for Ginny, "we have got neighbours, y'know?"

Ron scowled at them and gave them a two-fingered salute.

Chapter 5: The Longest Night

Ginny stumbled into the house with a yawn and threw her bag down onto the floor before blinking her sleepy eyes and calling out into the unusually darkened house.

"Harry?"

There was no reply. She checked the clock on the wall and then compared it to her watch. She wasn't late. Harry had told her that he would head back before her so she could drop in on Luna Lovegood and give the Quibbler the exclusive they wanted. She done it just to piss of the Daily Prophet to be honest, the vultures were circling the house once again, and word that Harry Potter had returned was the hot news of the day over the flu epidemic and the out of control Knight bus that ploughed into the front of something called a Virgin Megastore.

Ginny reminded herself to ask Harry why Virgins need their own store in the Muggle world when she found him.

She scrunched up her face as she realised that her house was completely empty. That never happened. The place hadn't been deserted since they'd all moved in. She flicked her wand and ignited the lamps and candles before calling out again.

"Bill? Ron? Where the hell are you all?"

She noticed a piece of parchment on the floor. It had obviously fallen off the small table in the hallway. She stooped down to pick it up and recognised Harry's handwriting immediately.

She read and felt her blood chill with every word.

Ginny,

We had to take Ron to St Mungo's. He got worse. Just missed you at Luna's. Your mum knows and Hermione's with him now. Come quickly.

Harry

Ginny ran into the living room and blasted the magical barrier away from the fireplace. She grabbed a handful of floo powder and stepped over the grate into the fireplace before throwing the powder down at her feet and roaring her destination out loud.

"St Mungo's!"

It was raining outside.

Was it ever not raining these days?

Ginny ran out of one of the fireplaces in the reception area in St Mungo's and found herself running across a wet floor. The entrance on the Muggle side was right next to the fireplaces and people were tramping their muddle-wet feet in and out, making the floors slick beneath her feet.

She skidded through a pool of brown water that the healers, patients and worried relatives had all walked through a thousand times. Then she had one of those moments, one of those brief seconds where everything seems to freeze, where you can take in every detail of your surroundings and think everything over thoroughly in the space of a single solitary second.

She took in the signs hanging from the grotty ceiling directing people to spell damage, splinch-reversal, toilets and organic toxification. She saw the rows and rows of pissed-off looking people waiting their turn. She wondered if this was where she needed to be and looked at the receptionist's desk. The witch looked pretty aggravated herself considering she was sitting beneath a sign saying 'welcome'.

The yellowy aged wall beside her was covered with posters; one calling for out-of-date potions to be thrown away or destroyed, one for free bloody replenishing, one for rare potion ingredients to be donated and a rack of leaflets about different maladies. There was a big poster with a picture of a fanged Frisbee on it and the words 'left unchecked - you'll lose your neck' beneath it. There was another with a fanged Frisbee decapitating a wizard standing in line at Flourish and Blotts, that poster bared the warning 'when you lose your head you stay dead'.

Ginny thought for a moment, the people at St Mungo's were really worried about fanged Frisbees for some reason.

Then she noticed the pair of boots in front of her face. Black leather boots, upside down, both heels worn at an angle and the toes all scuffed. Hold on...they were her boots, on her feet. Why were her feet in front of her face she wondered?

"Oh shi..."

Thump!

Ginny's body slammed down onto the floor with a revolting slap. She lay flat on her back, rapidly absorbing the filthy mud-water like a piece of kitchen towel. She could hear the advertising slogan in her head at that moment.

See how Ginny can soak up all this with one wipe.

Her mouth was gaping open and closed like a goldfish out of water and her lungs burned as the air was vacuumed out of her. She felt like her torso was deflating, that and the goldfish mouth made her feel like that blow-up doll with a puncture she had found in Percy's wardrobe a few years back. She tried to inhale but instead let out an embarrassing donkey-bray type honk.

She felt the last of the puddles soak into the seat of her knickers as they clung onto her bum cheeks and gave an uncomfortable groan. Just then a face hovered above her, a very familiar face, and he put a hand under her shoulder and peeled her up into a sitting position, which made her lungs blow a raspberry inside her like a pair of whoopee cushions being sat on by Hagrid and Madame Maxime. At this unwelcome sensation she gasped and inhaled a gulp of air.

"It's okay," Harry smiled, "go ahead and breathe. I'm pretty sure your lungs are still in there," he grinned before looking down at his feet, "Unless of course I'm stepping on them."

She was about to chuckle but just fell into a coughing fit instead which alerted her to the fact that her back hurt...a lot.

"Ow, don't," she said between chokes and chuckles, her back didn't just ache, it was bloody painful and even worse was, "my arse!"

"Now I know I'm not stepping on that."

"Don't be funny," she wheezed, "oh please don't be funny...Ow...ouch...bloody ouch!" she'd directed that last exclamation at the receptionist who didn't seem to have noticed this whole scenario or seem to give a hoot.

"C'mon, upsie daisy," Harry said as he helped her up and Ginny realised that she must have thrown him one of her derisive expressions as Harry apologised immediately, "Sorry, that was a very 'Your mum' thing to say."

"'S alright," was all she could muster as they sat down at the nearest pair of seats. Then she wished she hadn't as the wet in her clothing squelched into whole new places, "Uggh," she grimaced.

"The wet is an unfortunate side-effect," Harry smiled.

"This is fun for you? I'm so glad," Ginny huffed.

"No, I'm just relieved," Harry smiled, Ginny saw it in his eyes, he wasn't torn apart with concern for his best friend, Ron was going to be alright, "yeah, I'm just relieved that I'm not the only one that happened to today. I stacked it myself when I first came in, much in the same way you did, but with the added humiliation of the floor being bone dry at the time!"

Ginny sniggered.

"Go ahead and laugh, at least I'm not marinating in anonymous hospital waste," Harry teased.

Ginny donned her serious face.

"You're not about to tell me about an unfortunate spillage in that area involving and old man and a leaky colostomy are you?"

He let out a yelp of laughter and then stifled it when he realised how quiet the rest of the angry people in reception were. Ginny smiled and sighed with her newly functioning lungs. She raised her voice a couple of decibels and called across to the big and seemingly even angrier receptionist who was seething at her desk.

"Excuse me, I'm looking for Ron Weasley!" she hollered.

Harry laughed in disbelief. The receptionist was not so impressed.

"You can come to the desk and ask in a civil tone young lady."

Ginny remained seated and lifted her chin defiantly.

"Don't you lecture me on manners and courtesy you sour faced old trout. I just fell on my arse on your wet floor and you didn't even ask if I was alright so I'll stay bloody seated until my cheeks stop stinging alright?"

The receptionist's face flushed and then paled rapidly.

"And another thing," Ginny proclaimed, "you're supposed to put up a sign warning people that the floor is wet y'know?"

Harry leaned in towards her sideways and muttered into her ear as she stared at her enemy. She couldn't make out what he was saying and turned on her seat, causing spasms of pain down her back, and snapped.

"What?"

"There was a wet floor sign, one of those charmed ones that hovers about drying the puddles," Harry explained.

"So why is it gone now?"

"Because I fell on it."

For a fraction of a second Ginny managed to stay her strong, deadpan self, then she sighed out a little smile. She inhaled and tried to regain her stern facade, and managed it too for a moment, before descending into a fit of hysterical laughter that was comparable to an asthma attack. Harry joined in and the receptionist started rubbing her temples as if they had just induced a migraine.

Before Ginny realised that her eyes were even watering she felt Harry's arms around her and his comforting voice whispering words into her hair.

"I swear to you he's going to be alright Ginny. I promise you on my life."

Ginny clung to him and let her aching back shudder with the silent sobs that were now escaping her.

"I read your note and...I was so scared. I thought...I don't know what I thought," she sniffed.

"Shhh, it's alright, I wish I had more time to write something for you but we were really worried and Bill wanted to get him here as soon as possible."

Ginny pulled away and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

"What happened?"

Harry was rubbing her arms as he explained. Ron's cold had been getting worse all day and eventually he had lost his voice altogether. Bill hadn't been able to get him to eat at all and Ron wasn't able to drink either. When Harry had come home Hermione was there, Bill had sent her an owl and she had apparated right from work, and she was frantic. Ron had a high temperature and a cold sweat and not long after Harry had returned Ron had stopped responding. They hadn't been able to wake him at all and Bill had ordered Hermione to take Luke to the Burrow and let his mother know what was going on before picking Ron up in his arms and striding out into the back yard to disparate to St Mungo's with his sick brother.

Harry wrote the note, Hermione alerted the rest of the family and everybody had been waiting outside the treatment room Ron had been taken to upstairs.

"Upstairs?" Ginny frowned, "He's upstairs, so why are you down here?"

"I was waiting for you," he smiled sadly.

Ginny found herself looking up at the ceiling, as if she'd be able to see Ron through the plaster, grinning back down at her. She looked back into Harry's eyes and took his hand.

"Can we go and see him?"

"There are so many people up there already Ginny," Harry frowned, "they threw us all out to give him some peace. They had to practically wrestle your mum and Hermione away from him!"

Ginny tried to laugh at this image but she couldn't quite pull it off.

"Bill's up there, your mum and dad, the twins, Charlie just flooed in from Budapest and Hermione just refuses to go home," Harry shook his head and marvelled at how quickly the family had mobilised itself when they heard about Ron's turn for the worse.

"What's wrong with him Harry?"

Harry hugged her close to him despite her being so wet and grimy, neither of them really had enough of their wits about them to dry her off magically at that moment, and she stared off into space.

"His cold got worse and he hadn't been eating properly. The potions for his treatment just made him more prone to getting knocked for six by a silly virus. That's all it is Ginny, just a silly virus."

"What kind of silly virus?" she said, blinking her eyes rapidly to keep them as tear free as possible.

"Just...something called, some Muggle thing that they're doing a really good job with fixing," Harry interrupted himself, "he'll have to stay in overnight, for a couple of nights, but he's on the mend and he woke up and has been talking to everybody so it really is nothing to worry about at all," he grinned at her and gave her a kiss on the lips.

Ginny felt her stomach tie itself into a series of knots.

"What is it called Harry? What's this Muggle thing that they've made all better called?"

"It's called pneumonia."

Ginny didn't say a word, neither did Harry. She just sat, leaning into his arms and dripping onto the floor below from her sodden clothing, and found herself doing something she hadn't done since she first heard Ron's diagnosis all those months ago.

She imagined her life without Ron in it.

Chapter 6: Changes

"It was the day, March the Seventeenth, that Drool celebrated its favourite saint. The Saint and Scholar pub reeled under the alcoholic assault. Irishmen in steaming clutches lay stupefied in a series of grotesque positions, there were happy cross-eyed idiot smiles on their faces. From either end they expelled a mist of only-drunk-once whiskey fumes, one match could have set off the first Celtic atom bomb. From inside the pub further groups of Irishmen were training to join the unconscious alcoholics outside on the pavement. At intervals, to drunken singing, fresh bodies were carried out and let go with a thud on the pavement. There was a time-honoured ritual of emptying the man's pockets. An old Drool saying goes, 'What good is money to the unconscious?'"

Ginny laughed and looked at the cover of the book she was reading from. Ron grinned at her lazily from his hospital bed.

"You say Hermione's been reading you this?" she said in disbelief.

Ron nodded. His breathing was a lot better now but he still made a strained sound whenever he inhaled. He had been given several more potions on top of his treatment for the Nex Ultionis and had been pretty much semi-conscious even since he had been admitted. He was groggy but still awake enough to get very bored just lying in the bed all day.

"This doesn't seem very Hermione," Ginny said as she fanned through the pages of the book.

Ron's eyes closed as he smiled even wider. It was as if he couldn't concentrate on keeping his eyes open and smiling at the same time. Ginny put the book down and took his hand.

"They'll take you off the potions soon," she said happily, "Then we'll be able to have a proper conversation."

Ron squeezed her hand back and his eyelids grew heavier for a moment before he frowned and winced. Ginny knew what that meant. She carried on talking to him as if nothing was wrong while reaching out for the small basin that floated at the side of Ron's bed, pulling her brother onto his side and rubbing his back vigorously.

"Who'd have thought I'd miss having conversations with you though, eh? Pain in the arse that you are, it just doesn't feel right for you to be so quiet."

Ron threw up nothing more then the remnants of his last dose of potion and the nutrient drink he had been forced to down half an hour ago. Ginny kept rubbing his back, just in case the nausea hadn't quite passed yet, and sighed breezily.

"Fred and George have spoken to the Healers and they reckon that the Firewhisky and honey concoction of theirs might be worth a go, for your throat, y'know?"

Ron spat into the basin and rolled back onto bed, wiping his mouth and coughing a little to clear his throat.

"Mm," Ron said with a nod, brief sounds were the only thing that didn't hurt his sore throat at the moment and the twins had been working on something to soothe him enough so that he could start talking again.

They too found it too eerie to have Ron being so quiet with them.

"Want some water?" Ginny asked as she released the floating basin and gave it a little shove away from her.

The receptacle drifted off to the disposal area and a fresh one appeared in its place. Ron nodded and Ginny tapped his bed with her wand to sit him up. The bed moved him up into the sitting position while Ginny poured a glass of water from the jug on Ron's bedside table and brought it to his lips.

"You might come home tomorrow," she said in a carefree tone, "We'll have to lay a mattress and two dozen heavy blankets on the bathroom floor so you don't catch cold again this time round."

Ron's eyes lifted from the glass he was still steadily drinking from and she saw that little sparkle she could always raise with her teasing and grinned.

"Although it's going to be quite uncomfortable for Bill and Harry whenever they want to take a bath if you're sleeping right next to them, isn't it? Oh well, I'm sure you've seen it all before on both of them. I know I have."

Ron snorted his mouthful of water back into the glass and Ginny beamed with utter delight. Her mission for the visit had been accomplished. She had made him laugh.

"Ow, bugger!"

Harry hobbled across the room to fall backwards onto Ron's bed and massage his foot. Hermione was moving her books back in and had dropped them onto his poor toes.

"Oh sorry, Harry, but I did warn you I was lowering it down again," she said with a flustered sigh as she directed Bill where to put her trunk; he levitated it into the room and set it down gently.

"You didn't warn me, you said 'and down' and dropped it on my foot!" Harry protested.

Bill tried not to show his amusement at this as he left the room without a word, while Hermione began to put her clothes back into her empty half of the wardrobe.

"Moving is a stressful business, Harry and you're really not making it any easier, you know?" she snapped before marching over to Harry on the bed and peering down at his sore foot. "Oh really, all this fuss over a broken toe. Sano!"

Harry's foot numbed and then tingled before feeling absolutely fine again. He wriggled his toes and then put his sock and his shoe back on again. He would have started a snippy little banter with her at any other time, but at that moment he thought it was probably best not to. Hermione was stressed in so many different ways that not only would he lose any argument with her, he'd probably want to kill himself afterwards as well. Hermione's tongue was so sharp she could disembowel you with it if she chose to.

She had announced to Ginny, Bill and Harry over dinner the previous night that she was moving back in and looking after Ron whether he liked it or not. It was one thing for her to sit across the road while Ron was struggling with his illness, but a whole other agony for her to have that huge gap between them when he got out of hospital from pneumonia and had to deal with two recoveries at the same time.

Ron hadn't wanted her to see him at his worst. He felt ashamed of himself for being weak and sick in front of her. He thought it was humiliating, so Harry guessed. Hermione had done her best to make it easier for him. She had backed off just as far as she could stand to give him his space and what little dignity he had left, but this latest development had been too much for her. She had cried on Harry's shoulder, and then George's, which had shocked everyone, including George himself, when they had been told to go home and leave Ron at St Mungo's to rest.

Nobody had been prepared to lose Ron any time soon. They'd all known that the treatment was going to be dreadful, but they had also known that Ron had the resilience to stand up to it. He was getting better, the bezoar was breaking down, and, apart from the awful side effects, everything was going well for him. He was at low risk and Ginny's never-endingly confident attitude was a testament to that.

Ron was suffering to some extent, but he wasn't going anywhere.

The pneumonia had blindsided them all, and the family had all been pretty shaken up at how quickly it had taken hold of Ron. Now that he was recovering from that too, the family confidence was returning and the 'of course Ron's going to be alright' attitude was being projected from them one and all. It had been the final straw for Hermione, though.

"Weasley ego be damned, I'm not leaving him alone anymore!"

She had screamed the words into Harry's chest with such force it was like a punch. Ron hadn't been consulted about her moving back into the house, let alone his room...his bed, and nobody was going to bother to tell him either. Ron's stubbornness made him impossible to reason with so they'd by-passed reason and gone straight for doing what they wanted and would dare him to challenge them when he found out.

Harry hoped Ron would accept this change. Hermione needed to look after him, and everybody else in the house needed to know he wasn't going to be alone in his bedroom finding other ways to make himself ill without realising it.

Harry knew that it was much more then all that, though. He knew that Hermione just missed her boyfriend. She missed him desperately and painfully, and now she had him back no matter what he had to say about it.

"I think I'll put up a barrier around the bed so he can lean out of it to reach for a drink or his bucket but he can't get out of it to set up camp back in the bathroom," she pondered aloud as she looked down at the bed Harry was sitting upon.

"Confining him to his bed, Hermione?" Harry frowned, "He won't like that."

"Tough," Hermione said with a short shrug, "he's doing what he's told now, puppy eyes or not."

Harry smiled and followed Bill back downstairs while Hermione began working on her flexible barrier charm. Hermione had quite a temper when she had just had a fright and Harry didn't want to aggravate it. Ginny's temper always came out of frustration rather then fear.

He pondered upon that thought. When Ginny was frightened she would become unusually quiet, almost as if she was shy, and sometimes she would get pushed to the limit of her fear and then seem to grow stronger from it. She would stand up and set her jaw with determination and face that fear head-on: always quietly though, never snapping, shouting, crying or wailing. Fear brought out Ginny's strong, silent side.

At the moment Ginny was more relieved then scared. She was playful and jovial and being very helpful around the house, much to Bill's amusement. She would be back from visiting Ron soon and Harry thought about taking her out for the night. It was a horrible thought, but while Ron was in St Mungo's, his housemates had some of their freedom back and were quite enjoying it. They didn't have to come home early. They didn't have to keep it down. They could eat smelly food in the living room. It would have been great, if it hadn't been for that empty feeling that woke them at three o'clock in the morning and made them tiptoe to the bathroom just to make sure it was empty.

The front door banged and a cheerful voice called out along the hall.

"S'me!"

"Hello, Smee," Bill said with a chuckle, "have you seen Ginny?"

Harry chuckled to himself as he saw Ginny punch her brother on the arm playfully before jumping on his back and being carried on piggyback through to the kitchen where she greeted her squealing nephew.

"Look Luke, daddy's a big strong horsey!"

"Auntsie Gin on your back!" Luke yelled.

"Is she really?" Bill said as he spun around on the spot to classic puppy-chasing-tail comic effect.

Luke cackled and Ginny slid down off her brother's back. Harry crept up behind her and curled his arms around her waist and spun her around.

"I've got her, Luke!"

Luke and Ginny made the same high-pitched sound of amusement before Harry set her down and gave her a brief kiss.

"So how was he?" Harry smiled, knowing he'd like the answer due to his girlfriend's degree of levity when she arrived home.

"He's great, they'll ease his throat this afternoon and that wheeze thing'll be gone overnight the healers say. We can bring him home tomorrow as long as we do something about the bathroom slumber parties."

"Oh, Hermione's sorting something out about that now," Harry said as he pointed up at the ceiling above his head.

Ginny laughed and looked up.

"She really came back then?"

"Of course she did: came back...moved in...broke my foot...now she's warding the bed!"

"Brilliant!" Ginny beamed.

Harry must've looked a little grumpy, as her face fell into an expression of deep sympathy and she pulled his head down to her chest and stroked his hair.

"I mean, poor Harry and his broken foot," she said in a mocking tone.

"I'd shove you except I'm actually enjoying having my face in here," Harry murmured from between Ginny's breasts.

"I could stamp on your other foot, that'd take your mind off it," Ginny said in that tone of hers that Harry could never decipher was joking or serious.

He pulled his face away from the warmth of her body with a pout and Ginny grinned at him and gave him a peck on the cheek.

"So this is our last free night for a while," she sighed up at him, "and I was thinking..."

"No need for thinking, Ginny," Harry said boldly as he struck a manly pose, "I have planned our night. You are coming with me into town and we will paint it Weasley red!"

Ginny choked on her laughter at Harry's uncharacteristic display of machismo before giving a whoop and dancing around the kitchen with a bemused Bill.

Harry tripped as Ginny pulled him into a darkened corner of the club and began nibbling at his neck while sliding her hands beneath his shirt. He was thoroughly enjoying the sensation, but also felt as if every pair of eyes in the place was watching them.

The saviour of the Wizarding world and the Weasley girl getting up to mischief in plain view of anybody who cared to look.

At first Harry had been polite and said hello to the total strangers who had approached him. Then he had cast a look of apology at an impatient Ginny as he signed a couple of autographs. A predatory platinum-haired witch with slinky movements nudged Ginny aside with her hips and draped an arm across Harry's shoulder before asking him to dance.

"Um..." Harry had met Ginny's livid eyes, fearing the worst for this poor unsuspecting woman, "I don't think that's a good ide-"

Ginny thrust her own hips back at the willowy witch and flicked her long red hair over her shoulder, whipping the woman in the face with it before pulling Harry into her and planting a possessive kiss on his lips.

"Let's dance, Potter," she said, with no room for argument.

"Yes, Ginny, whatever you say, Ginny," Harry said meekly before throwing a helpless shrug to the outraged fair-haired witch as he was dragged past her, "What can I say, she's got my bollocks in that handbag, I have to do what she says!"

They had danced as much as Harry's un-coordination would allow, Ginny had found it impossible to understand how such a good Seeker could be so clueless when it came to moves.

"Ron can do it and his feet are huge!" she had exclaimed.

"Ron can't dance," Harry snorted.

"Oh yes he can," Ginny nodded before standing Harry still and ordering him to twirl her.

"Since when?" Harry said as Ginny threw herself into Harry's arms and snapped that he was to dip her now.

"Since forever," Ginny huffed, "the point of a dip is that at some point I come back up again, Harry!"

"Oh," Harry blinked before lifting Ginny back upright. She made some kind of movement that crossed his arms over while she nestled her back into his chest and they moved from side to side as if they were made to fit together like that.

"All the Weasleys can dance, even Percy, when he pulls the Minister of Magic's hand out of his arse long enough to do anything for himself," Ginny scowled, "dopey-arsed puppet!"

Harry noticed that a nearby couple were staring at Ginny as if she was the most unladylike witch they had ever seen in their life. Harry uncrossed his arms, spinning Ginny back so she was facing him again and smiled at her before kissing her on the lips proudly and lifting her arm so she could twirl again. Ginny seemed delighted by this and started spinning.

"See I knew you had it in you if you just relaxed a bit," she said as she stumbled into him giddily.

Harry curled his arms around her and they danced cheek-to-cheek.

"So if Ron can dance, why won't he ever do it then?" Harry mumbled.

"Same reason nobody in their right mind would dance in our family, Fred and George," Ginny explained, "They tease us all enough as it is without adding dancing to their armoury."

Harry laughed at this and felt thankful indeed that the twins weren't around to deride his attempt to manoeuvre their sister around the dance floor.

"But all Weasleys have got some moves, that's why so many of us are naturals at Quidditch - sport and dancing are in our genes," Ginny said as she rubbed her hand up his back. "Charlie told me it was the red hair."

"Huh?" Harry frowned.

"He said that red-haired people have natural rhythm because of the years of persecution," Ginny looked up at Harry and shrugged, "I don't quite know what he means, but it's one explanation, isn't it?"

Harry kissed her again before seeing the moody-looking platinum blonde witch glaring at them, along with several other nosy people who just seemed to feel that Harry Potter was public property and shouldn't be hogged by one silly little fan all night. He felt suddenly self-conscious and whispered something into Ginny's ear. She smiled up at him sympathetically before dragging him into the darkened corner where they were now succumbing to some secret passion. Well as secret as they could get, anyway.

Ginny raked her fingers down Harry's back and he sucked on her tongue before licking across her bottom lip and pulling at it between his teeth teasingly. Ginny jumped up at him and curled her legs around his waist to dive into his mouth deeply with her tongue. Harry supported her by slipping both his hands beneath her buttocks. They kissed like that until they had to break apart for breath.

"Wow," Ginny gasped.

"Thanks," Harry panted back into her face with a smile.

"You've never kissed anyone else while you were away all that time?" Ginny frowned.

"Honestly," Harry said, trying to convey the truth with his most honest expression.

"Mmmm," Ginny sighed and she leaned in for more, "'cause you're really good at that."

Harry beamed proudly.

"Y'know, for somebody so out of practice," Ginny blinked matter-of-factly.

Harry dropped Ginny back down and looked back onto the crowded dance floor.

"Right, where's that tasty little number from earlier on? I'll get some practice in for you, Ginevra."

"Don't you dare!" Ginny warned as she grabbed him by the front of his shirt and pulled him back towards her.

They both laughed before smuggling into each other and swaying absent-mindedly in time to the music. Harry stroked Ginny's hair and sighed.

"I wish you could have been with me at all those places where I wasn't known. I wish you could have just been that beautiful girl with that speccy guy as we walked along the shores of Sri Lanka. I wish I could be that lucky little sod who was kissing the gorgeous bird that was way out of his league in Costa Rica. I wish we could be that anonymous couple dancing in Cuba or swimming in Koh Lan."

"You've been everywhere, haven't you?" Ginny said in awe as she started into his eyes.

"Everywhere nobody knows me, yeah," he nodded.

"And I've been...here," Ginny said, her body going limp in his arms and her face falling with disappointment.

"You've been looking after your brothers, and don't tell me you regret that, Ginny Weasley, or I'll hex you with your own bat bogeys!" Harry threatened.

Ginny broke into a smile again and her arms tightened around his body again.

"Of course I don't regret that. I just regret that it had to be that way. I regret that Bill only had the love of his life for such a short time. I regret that little Luke won't ever know his mother. I regret that Ron gave up on a normal childhood to fight a war, and all for what? So he could voluntarily poison himself for a year and a half!"

Harry held Ginny even tighter and kissed the top of her head.

"Don't think like that, Ginny."

"But I do think like that, and then I feel like a bitch for resenting them all for holding me back and ruining my fun. I want to have fun, Harry. I want to see the world like you did. I want to have  dark  blue hair and damn what my mother has to say about it. I want to be allowed to dance with my boyfriend in public without getting funny looks for any other reason other then the fact that he can't dance to save his life. I wan-"

Harry kissed her deeply, slowly and for a very long time before letting her go again.

"I want you to keep doing that," Ginny gasped.

With a shudder and a loud bang from the exhaust, the twins' car pulled up outside the house and Bill carried Luke out to the street to welcome his brother back home.

Hermione got out of the back of the car, looking a little pale and traumatised from her journey, and ran around to get Ron's door for him. Ron had already opened it and was pulling himself out of his seat by the time she got to him, and they had one of their snappy moments of 'Let me give you a hand' and 'I'm fine' until Fred climbed out of the driver's seat and strode over to the kerb to slap a heavy hand around Ron's shoulders and grinned one of his most mischievous grins.

"Let's get inside and fight there Ronniekins!"

Ron chuckled and shook his head, and Hermione exhaled some of her anxiety and took Ron's hand as they all headed back into the house. Harry felt Ginny's body lean into him and he gave her a one-armed hug as they watched Bill explaining to Luke why Uncle Ron couldn't carry him right now.

Ginny took a bracing huff and stepped out of the house to give Ron a cuddle. Harry watched as Ron gave a slight wince before he caught Harry watching him and winked cheekily. He was, though Harry hadn't thought it possible, even thinner now and his freckles were the only colour in his face at all. His baggy jumper hung off him and he was walking as if he'd just climbed a thousand stairs. Harry flashed his best 'isn't everything great?' grin as Ron reached the doorstep where he stood waiting.

"Welcome home, mate."

"Cheers, Harry," Ron smiled before hesitating awkwardly for a moment, "Well are you going to let me in, or have we installed a password?"

"Oh!" Harry said as he jumped aside as if electrified, "Sorry, in you come."

"Straight up to bed!" Bill was yelling from the front garden.

"Godabed!" Luke mimicked as he pointed up the stairs and pulled his 'grumpy daddy' face.

"Bloody hell," Ron shook his head ruefully, "not even in the bloody door and they're bloody starting on me."

"Shut up yer moaning and do as yer told!" Fred said, enjoying being bossy for the right reason for once.

"Yeah," George agreed, "I want to see the look on his face when he finds out that Hermione's moved back in."

Ron spun around so fast that he almost fell over.

"She's WHAT?"

Bill and Harry heard the commotion coming from the upstairs bathroom and frowned at each other.

They climbed the stairs to see what all the racket was about. They weren't concerned, though: it didn't sound as if Ron was being ill, it sounded like laughter. Ron's throat was clearing up now and Harry could hear his voice; no, he could hear two voices.

Bill pushed the bathroom door open and stood, totally aghast, at the sight before him.

He saw his youngest brother standing over the bathtub with a pair of rubber gloves on his hands and the shower nozzle in his hand running at full power over his sister's head where she crouched over the edge of the tub. Her long hair was falling into the bath as the shower rinsed the most horrendous coloured water down the drain. There were splashes of it up the walls, around the rim of the bathtub, over Ron's face. There was a big dark handprint on the side of the sink. Bill and Harry took it all in.

Bill was the first to speak. He was very calm.

"What are you doing?"

Ron and Ginny held their breath and bit their lips, their shoulders juddering up and down with suppressed hysteria at the look on Bill and Harry's faces. Ron nodded to a pile of boxes in the sink. Bill looked; they were boxes of hair-colouring equipment from a Muggle shop. He looked at them, then back at the debris around the bathroom, then back at his brother and sister again.

"Well, keep rinsing it before all her hair falls out then," he nodded to Ron.

Ron moved the showerhead over Ginny's hair a little more.

"It's okay Bill, it won't fall out," Ginny called from under the mound of wet dark hair.

Harry saw from the boxes that this was permanent hair dye and wondered why Ginny hadn't just got a professional beautification witch to perform the spell for her. Ginny seemed to have read his mind and smiled at him, upside down, between her legs.

"As soon as mum saw it she'd change it back with a flick of a wand," Ginny shouted over the running water.

"And she can't change it if it's coloured the Muggle way?" Harry blinked.

"Uh-uh," Ron grinned.

"Well," Bill said after a short pause, "when you've finished colouring your sister blue, come down and have something to eat."

"Will do," Ron nodded.

Bill and Harry stepped out of the bathroom and closed the door behind them. They heard the raspberries of repressed laughter spurt out of the two youngest Weasleys. Harry had a little smile to himself. Ginny might be a pain and a nag and have the worst and most spiteful arguments with her brother, but she always knew how to cheer Ron up.

A short while later, Ron was seated at the kitchen table eating some scrambled eggs, while Ginny brushed her tangled navy blue hair.

"Y'know, you're pretty crap at that, Ron, my hair's never normally this bad," she grumbled.

"Leave it," Ron said with his mouth full, "I'll have a go with it when I'm finished."

"Nah, don't bother, I'll just leave it to dry a bit and then have another try."

"Ginny you're hair's a good eighteen inches long, how long is that going to take to dry naturally?" Bill scoffed as he washed up the pots and pans.

"Only a couple of weeks," Ginny said with her deadpan delivery.

Ron shovelled another forkful of eggs into his mouth before pushing the plate away from him, only half the food consumed.

"No, let me do it for you, I get the tangles out of Hermione's all the time," Ron said as he pulled his sister into the empty chair beside him and took the brush out of her hand.

Ginny stared at Harry with wide eyes and a shocked grin spreading across her face. Harry laughed, but chose not to say anything about what he had just heard. Bill wasn't so tactful, however.

"Blimey, Ron, are you a wizard or a hairdresser trapped in a wizard's body?"

Ginny chortled at this and Harry let himself smirk before his face cracked in two with the effort not to. Ron gave a tut and scowled at Bill before smirking himself.

"Well it'd have to be a pretty stupid hairdresser for it to choose this body, wouldn't it?"

Bill threw his tea-towel at him; he still wasn't happy with Ron talking about himself like that.

"Are you done with those eggs?" Bill pointed down to the half-empty plate.

"Yeah, thanks, Bill," Ron said distractedly as he set about running the brush through the ends of Ginny's hair.

Bill cleared away the plate and seemed to be holding back from making a big deal out of the fact that Ron had eaten something substantial without putting up a fight. Harry moved forward and nudged Bill.

"Want a hand with the washing up?" he mumbled.

"No, I'm fine, thanks, Harry," Bill smiled.

Both of them knew that Harry was really letting Bill know that he had seen it too. Ron was getting better.

"Saying that your inner-hairdresser is stupid doesn't really convince me to let either of you loose on me with a brush and a wand," Ginny snorted.

"Behave, or I'll make it all mad like Trelawney's!" Ron warned.

His threat got the better of her: for the first time since he had fallen ill, Ron Weasley got his sister to shut up.

Chapter 7: Picking Up Where You Left Off

Ginny tiptoed into Ron and Hermione's room to empty Ron's bucket. She knew the horror of waking up to it in the morning and thought she'd spare Hermione on her first night back home.

As Ginny leaned forward and reached out, she noticed Hermione smiling at her and froze.

"Sorry," Ginny whispered, "I didn't want to wake you."

"You didn't," Hermione whispered back, still smiling, "I've been up for a couple of hours now."

Ginny frowned at her friend before looking at Ron. He was sound asleep. Hermione was playing with his hair as she propped herself up on her side next to him, still with that serene smile on her face.

"Was he up all night?" Ginny asked as she glanced down into the bucket with a wince of revulsion.

"Just a couple of hours," Hermione shrugged. "Maybe three, I wasn't counting."

Ginny sat down as softly as she could on the side of the bed. There was something oddly hypnotic about Hermione's contentment while talking about being kept up all night by the harsh vomiting sounds of the man she loved. Hermione seemed to realise that her behaviour was slightly odd, and laughed quietly before leaning over and kissing the side of Ron's head. Then she sat up properly and explained herself to Ginny.

"You know how he doesn't like appearing weak in front of me?"

Ginny nodded as she set the sick bucket down again.

"Well, last night he cried," Hermione broke into a huge grin and hugged her pillow to herself in lieu of being able to hug Ron. "He let me see him cry. He let me take care of him."

Ginny looked back down at her brother and tried to understand exactly what it was Hermione was feeling, but she couldn't quite get there. She had seen Ron cry before. She had seen him at his weakest and most vulnerable. She had seen him in the most degrading positions, suffering in the most demeaning ways, and she had never once seen any reason to smile about it.

She did know why it meant the world to Hermione, though.

"That's all I ever wanted, Ginny," Hermione swallowed before looking back at Ron herself and running her fingers through his hair again tenderly, "I just wanted him to let me take care of him."

"He thinks it's humiliating," Ginny found herself choking out through her constricted throat, "he doesn't want people to see him being weak and pathetic. He doesn't realise...that it's...that he's strong, y'know?"

Hermione nodded.

Ginny took in a bracing breath, and immediately wished she hadn't as the smell of her brother's stomach contents hit her full in the face. She made a gagging noise and held her breath before reaching for the bucket and leaving the room with it. She paused at the door to smile back at Hermione. The weary but content-looking young witch was settling back down onto her side beside Ron.

Harry was rummaging through his travelling bag when Ginny stepped into the bedroom with a mug of hot tea in her hands. She was still wearing her rumpled dancing outfit from the night before and was barefoot as she wandered over and stood behind him.

"What are you looking for?" she asked, taking a sip of her tea and crouching down beside him.

"Nothing, I'm just looking," Harry mumbled as he pulled out a wooden box with numbers along the top and two dice inside a felt lined tray.

"What's that?" Ginny pointed at it.

"Oh, it's a game they play in the bars in Thailand, I got it for Ron and then forgot about it."

"Oh," Ginny said, her voice brightening, "you mean we get presents?"

Harry laughed at this and finally tore his attention away from the large travelling bag.

"Yeah, you all got presents," Harry said with a shake of the head, "but I forgot to give them to you all what with all the puking and babies and..." Harry looked down at the hem of Ginny's short dress that was riding up high on her thigh, "other stuff."

Ginny slapped him on the arm and he lost his balance and bumped down onto his buttocks with a chortle. Ginny wriggled the dress back down as she knelt beside him and set her mug on the floor to lean over the open bag.

"So what did you get me?" she asked excitedly.

"Well I got this for when I see Charlie next, except he's gone back to Hungary now so it'll have to wait," Harry held up a box with various exotic insects mounted inside and Ginny shuddered.

"Don't let Ron see that," she warned him, "or Hermione for that matter, I'm sure she's against that sort of thing for some reason."

Harry had to agree with that and shoved the gift from Burma deep inside his bag once more.

"So what was it you got me then?" Ginny said, patting her hands against her lap impatiently.

"Well," Harry rummaged further inside his travelling bag and pulled out something that looked like mould in a triangular jam jar, "that's for Neville," then an intricately woven shawl in a quite stunning shade of blue, "got this in Korea for your mum," then he removed something called a roadside emergency kit and laughed to himself, "I did get this for your dad, y'know what with his Muggle fetish and everything? I think it's better suited to Fred and George now though."

Ginny huffed and yanked the box out of Harry's hands to set down out of the way with all the other 'gifts'.

"That's lovely Harry but wh-" she was beginning to say sharply before seeing Harry's face light up and him plunge himself, almost shoulder-deep, into the bag.

"Brilliant!" he exclaimed before pulling back out of the bag with something small in his hands.

Ginny was so excited that she jiggled excitedly and one of the straps of her dress slipped off her shoulder. Harry felt his focus wavering, along with his loins, in her direction and leaned over to brush his lips against hers.

"We can go through this lot later," Harry murmured into her mouth as he slid his free hand up her thigh and beneath her dress.

"Give me what you've got, Harry," Ginny sighed as his hand slipped around her hipbone and squeezed her firm bottom.

"Oh, I intend to," he said as he pulled Ginny on top of him and set about wriggling her slinky little dress over her head.

"Harry!" Ginny said sternly as she prised his hand open and shimmied her dress back down, "I meant give me what you've got!"

She pulled the small plastic device from his hand and scrunched up her nose before looking back down at him in his slightly confused and highly aroused state.

"What the bloody hell is this?" Ginny said, laying the little device on the palm of her hand and holding it before Harry's nose.

"It's a snakebite thingy, for sucking out venom if you get bitten," Harry blinked back at her, "I had it for the jungle and I thought your dad might think it was funny."

Ginny blinked and stared back at him, as if willing him to be teasing her, while Harry sat himself back up again and felt his jeans pinching tightly at his crotch.

"'Cause I'm gonna give the roadside kit to the twins, remember?" Harry tried to explain while attempting to find a less painful way to sit that didn't threaten to circumcise his erection, "And it was meant for your dad...So I remembered that I had the snakebite thingy and thought he might...like...Ginny, are you about to punch me for some reason?"

"You really are an idiot, Harry Potter," Ginny snapped as she got back to her feet and stomped out of the room before returning with a flushed face, stooping to pick up her mug of tea and turning to leave again, "even more so then Ron!"
"Whoa, steady on there, Gin!" Harry protested as his girlfriend flounced out once again and slammed the door hard behind her.

Harry gaped down at his groin for a moment and shook his head in bewilderment.

"What did we do?"

Bill was feeding Luke in his high chair while Ron was pouring himself a glass of pumpkin juice and watching Hermione preparing some porridge. The baby kept turning away from his father to reach out for his uncle and tug at his sleeve. Ron crouched down at his nephew's side and grinned before dipping his finger into the little jar of baby food Bill was attempting to make seem appetising.

"Wanna swap?" he whispered to Luke, "I get your nice orangey thing and you get my yucky grey goop?"

"No!" Luke said, gurgling a laugh as Ron looked annoyed.

Luke curled his little pudgy arms around the jar protectively and watched Ron with excited giggles.

"Some ally you are," Ron huffed as he stood up again, "Don't come crying to me when you've got chocolate pudding that wants eating, I'll be happily guzzling my lovely nutrient drink!"

Luke squealed with laughter and did not protest when his father held a heaped spoonful of revolting-looking orange mush before his lips.

"There ya go," Bill said with a smile as he watched his boy close his mouth over the entire spoon and swallow the baby food, "Don't let Uncle Ron get any of it."

Ginny was sitting quietly in the corner, seething about her thick-as-a-plank-boyfriend not giving her her bloody present and being more interested in nookie, as she saw Bill catching Ron's eye and silently thanking him for his help. Ron winked at him before turning back to Hermione and curling his arms around her waist.

"Speaking of the nutrient drink," Ron said in his very best 'asking a favour from mum' voice, "do I really have to have it today, Minminee?"

Hermione struggled not to smile at Ron using Luke's name for her as she hissed back her response over her shoulder.

"Not if you drink your juice and eat more then half of this," she nodded down to the porridge, "you don't."

Ron seemed to frown and consider his options.

"And I want you to eat something green today, too," she said as she stirred the porridge and straightened her back to adopt an immovable posture.

"Not sprouts or cabbage, Hermione, please," Ron winced.

"There are peas and green beans in the larder," Hermione spoke in a clipped tone that didn't invite argument, "and you will either eat some vegetables today or drink half a pint of your nutrient drink."

"But it tastes of ear wax," Ron moaned.

"Then I suggest you opt for the vegetables, Ronald," Hermione said with a chipper smile as she turned around in his loose arms and stood on tiptoe to plant a kiss on his lips.

Ron glanced over to Ginny miserably.

"I don't suppose she'd let me move across the road, would she?" he asked his sister.

Ginny smiled at him sympathetically and shook her head.

"Don't worry, Ron, at least Harry brought you a present back from his travels," she huffed, folding her arms.

Ron stood to attention and his eyebrows rose right up as high as they could go.

"Harry got me a present?" he said excitedly.

"Harry got everybody presents," Ginny said with a roll of her eyes.

"Cool!" Ron beamed as he released Hermione and set off out of the kitchen and up the stairs without even a glance back at his amused girlfriend.

"Do you sometimes get the feeling," Hermione put her hand on her hip and looked at Ginny with a shake of the head, "that you and I are getting in the way of the perfect marriage?"

Ginny didn't get a chance to reply to that as Bill almost choked to death with laughter.

"'Kay, so what is it I'm aiming for again?" Ron said as he stared down at the handmade wooden game Harry had brought back for him.

"You want to close all these numbered flaps without rolling yourself out of the game," Harry explained.

"And you do that by not having any options left but flaps still open?" Ron confirmed with a frown.

"Yeah," Harry said, feeling useless at explaining games, especially to Ron, who was some kind of genius when it came to things like that, "So you roll a eight and you close flaps six and two to make eight," Ron nodded and Harry went on, "and then you might roll a twelve and you'd close flap number nine and three..."

"But then I might get an eleven come up and I don't have the three or the eight to do it so I lose," Ron said, catching on much faster then Harry had done when he had learned how to play - although the person teaching him had been speaking Lao and he'd been more then a little drunk at the time.

"Yeah, so it's one to nine, and then this little picture one here, that's like a wild card for whatever number you need it to be - but you can only use that once, obviously, and it's best kept for emergencies."

"So surely that'd be best used with one of your high numbers in place of one of your low numbers, 'cause statistically you're gonna need more low ones then high ones, and you can get a lot further with a bunch of low numbers then you can a couple of high ones and a wild card?" Ron said with a nod, and then stared at Harry, expecting him to concur.

Harry just blinked back at Ron in awe before responding.

"Your brain frightens me sometimes."

Ron snorted loudly and broke into that lopsided grin of his. Harry chuckled and gave his friend a gentle slap on the back.

"Thanks mate, it's brilliant," Ron said as he held out his hand for Harry to help him up off the floor. "Did ya find Ginny's yet, she's spitting chips down there?"

Harry's face fell and he suddenly realised why she had called him an idiot. Ron saw his expression and looked absolutely horrified.

"Oh, Harry, don't say you don't have anything for her. She's gonna kill you!"

"I...But I had something...and then...oh shit!" Harry sputtered.

"Kill. You. Dead." Ron said sadly.

"I'm gonna kill him!" Ginny seethed as she paced up and down the living room while Hermione tried to calm her down, very unsuccessfully.

"Oh come on now, Ginny, surely you're not so shallow as to measure how much Harry thinks of you by silly things like presents?"

Ginny spun around on her heel and glared at Hermione.

"Are you calling me shallow?"

"No!" Hermione stepped back away from Ginny's wrath and held up both her hands, "No, not at all."

Ginny let out a frustrated growl before throwing herself down into a nearby armchair and running her hands through her long navy blue hair.

"All that pouting he gave me about having saved himself for me and me having more experience then him and he didn't give me a bloody second thought while he was away!"

"Oh come on now, Ginny, he wrote to you all the time and he didn't look at another woman while he was gone. Some women would tell you that was an incredible gift from a boyfriend while he was away."

"Well, some women can sod off!" Ginny grumbled before flinging herself backwards in her seat to scowl up at the ceiling, "I want my bloody present."

Hermione seemed to have stifled a laugh, Ginny thought, and she made an excuse to get back to the kitchen and relieve Bill from temporary porridge duty. Ginny sat up again and grabbed Hermione's wrist, pulling her back into the living room and frowning.

"If you've got something to say, then just say it," she demanded.

Hermione took in a deep sigh and perched herself upon the arm of the sofa, her hands in her lap, and prepared herself for the inevitable explosion of Weasley temper.

"Alright then," Hermione began, "well you sometimes, only sometimes, Ginny, have a bit of an attitude when it comes to being protected and treated like a baby or a fragile little girl, and you're always demanding to be treated the same as all your brothers."

"Something wrong with that, is there?" Ginny said as she folded her arms and lifted her chin.

"Not at all," Hermione said diplomatically, "but it can be a little..." the bushy-haired witch appeared to struggle for the right way to word her next statement, "some might call it hypocritical of you Ginny, I said some and not me, remember!"

Hermione held up a finger to stop Ginny's outraged interruption before going on.

"You want to be an equal and you want to be one of the boys and you're proud not to be the precious little princess that you could so easily have become in this family but," Hermione winced and her shoulders cringed a little in preparation for the inevitable rebuttal of rage that would be thrown at her as soon as she was finished, "there are times when you act like the very spoiled only girl-type that you are always trying so hard not to become, and seem to take issue with any time when everybody's attention is not focused on admiring you."

Ginny sat back in her chair and stared open-mouthed at Hermione before sitting bold upright and lifting her finger to waggle it in her face in preparation for delivering her own little speech. Then her hand dropped and she sat - slumped - back into her seat again.

"Oh Godric, I'm not one of those girls, am I?" she groaned.

Hermione seemed slightly surprised at not having her head bitten off, and tentatively leaned forward to pat Ginny on the knee.

"Only once in a while, and not for very long," Hermione smiled kindly, "We all have our moments after all. You're talking to an only child, remember?"

Ginny smiled a little at that; Hermione sighed with relief before moving across to sit on the arm of Ginny's chair and giving her a hug.

"Merlin, I missed you around here, Hermione," Ginny sighed into her skirt, "Promise me you won't let Ron send you away again."

"He couldn't get rid of me now if he tried," Hermione answered.

"I did have a present for her, that's the thing," Harry explained desperately, "but it wasn't anything I could pull out of a bag or wrap up with a bow on top. It was plans I made, plans for us."

Ron seemed a little uneasy as he listened to this.

"Harry, you're not telling me that you're going to ask my sister to marry you, are ya?"

Harry's eyes almost bulged out of his head so far that they touched the lenses of his glasses.

"No! Bloody hell, Ron, we're still way to young for that!"

Ron seemed to relax again and put a hand on Harry's back to encourage him to go ahead and tell him what these plans of his were.

"Well that's something, because you don't want all six of the Weasley boys giving you 'the talk'," Ron said ominously as he made air quotations with his fingers. "Me and the twins were all it took to make Michael Corner shit his pants!"

Harry was about to laugh until he saw Ron was serious, and his face changed dramatically.

"Oh, right."

"Yup," Ron nodded, "although it'll really us be five of us, as we don't count Percy anymore, do we?" he shrugged carelessly.

"Oh well that's a relief, the nerdy one with the glasses won't be there to threaten me...phew!"

Ron laughed at this before pointing at Harry's face.

"You can't really talk, Harry," he said smugly.

"Shut up, sick-boy!" Harry found himself snapping back in playful retort before suddenly feeling a chill run down his spine, "Ron, I'm so sorry, I didn't thi-"

"Don't you dare ruin it by apologising!" Ron warned him sternly, "It's taken you bloody long enough to talk to me the way you normally do and I'm not letting you go back to being 'super sensitive' Harry now. It creeps me out when you're not getting stroppy about something!"

Harry grinned. Ron knew him better then he did himself and vice versa. He wanted to tell him how much he had missed him while he was gone, but that wasn't the done thing between blokes and it would certainly put him back into 'super sensitive' Harry territory and gain him a punch in the arm.

"OK, then, you git," Harry smiled, "I'm not the least bit sorry. In fact I might get you a new bucket for your room with 'sick boy' emblazoned across it in bright orange letters!"

"That's more like it," Ron gave a nod of approval.

"So about your sister, then," Harry said as he sat forward to confide in Ron.

"Don't tell me anything gross," Ron warned as he too leaned forward.

"Is that all you ever think about?" Harry tutted.

"It's one of the reasons I've been puking so much, to be honest!"

Harry had come down to lunch after confiding in Ron about his derailed plans.

They had eaten side by side, without a word other them pleasantries spoken between them, while Bill ate his lunch in peace and Hermione and Ron amused Luke with the 'feed Uncle Ron' game. That particular game meant Luke and Ron had more porridge on their faces then Ron had in his stomach, but it bought Bill enough time to eat without getting indigestion, and warmed Ron up enough to face the light salad Hermione was persuading him to pick at a little until he claimed to be full. Ron being full after eating cucumber was about as topsy-turvy as life got as far as Ginny was concerned.

Now they were sitting outside in the shade, watching Ron sleeping with his head in Hermione's lap while she read that strange book she had been reading to him when he was in St Mungo's and laughing occasionally. She would tangle her fingers in Ron's hair as she read; every once in a while she would pause to take a sip of her drink before leaning over to check on him again and then relaxing back against the bench she was sitting on.

"Do you think we'll ever be like that?" Harry frowned as he watched them from afar.

"I don't think anybody else in the world can be like that," Ginny sighed, "I think you've got to have suffered so much together to be able to find that kind of peace with each other."

Harry seemed to understand what she meant by that and put his arm around her. She leaned into him and slipped her own arms around his waist.

"We've both suffered, haven't we?" Harry said sadly as he rested his head on top of hers and sniffed her hair.

"It's not the same," Ginny shrugged, "I wasn't with you to be terrified for you the way Hermione was with Ron. I wasn't just a stone's throw away from you when you needed me, like Hermione has been, living across the road for all those months."

"No, I suppose not."

"And Hermione likes to worry, and Ron gives us all nothing but that, so they're perfectly suited, aren't they?" Ginny smiled as she saw Ron roll over onto his side and bury his face into Hermione's body.

"Well I like adventure, and you're never dull for a second," Harry said, raising his eyebrows and squeezing her shoulder.

Ginny smiled and tightened her hold around his body with both arms.

"Little Miss Firecracker, that's me!" she said lazily.

She felt Harry break away from her and turn her around to face him head-on.

"I did have something special for you, a present of sorts," Harry began.

"No, don't," Ginny put her hands over his mouth and shook her head guiltily, "I can't believe how much of a child I was acting before. I was one tantrum away from Hermione throwing me into Luke's cage."

Harry sniggered. "It's a playpen."

"Same difference," Ginny shrugged with a slight smile curling the corners of her mouth.

Harry released her and put his hand into his back pocket. She frowned as she saw him withdrawing a folded up piece of coloured paper and laying it in her hand.

"What's this?" she frowned and she unfolded the paper and recognised it as a map, covered in little red dots.

"It's the world, Ginny," Harry smiled, "I was going to give you the world."

Ginny smiled at the romantic gesture, that petulant alter ego of hers stamping its foot at her present being so cheap all the same, and leaned forward to kiss Harry on the cheek. She pointed down at the red dots all over the various countries.

"So these are all the places you've been, eh?" she gazed across the map sadly before her eyes fell to the tiny island towards the top where she had been born and very rarely moved from at all, other then a trip to Egypt when she was younger.

"No," Harry said as he looked her in the eye, "these are all the places I never went to because I wanted to see them with you."

Ginny's eyes flew open wide and she gaped at him in disbelief.

"What?"

Harry cast his hand idly across the map on Ginny's lap and spoke in a confident tone of voice.

"I was going to come back to stay at the Burrow for a while, catch up with everybody, get a bit of my old life back and then I was going to take you away with me for three months' travelling. I'm sick of travelling alone, Ginny, and I've still got all this much left to see," he nodded down at the map.

"Oh wow, Harry, that's...that was so..."

"Yeah, well," Harry shrugged, "I came home and caught up with everybody again and found my best friends apart from each other, one of them seriously ill, and you playing mother to Fleur's new baby. I couldn't ask you to leave them, could I? Blimey, Ginny, I couldn't leave them like that!"

Ginny launched herself at Harry and knocked him flat on his back. She landed on top of him and covered his face with kisses.

"You really are incredible, Harry Potter, do I ever tell you that?" she said as she clung to him, the crumpling map between their bodies, and felt him laughing beneath her.

"You just did," he chuckled.

"That didn't count," she smiled before moving her lips towards his and pressing them together firmly.

As they broke away from each other again Harry smiled up at her in something of a daze.

"So what d'you think?" he grinned.

"I think I want to do that a few more times," Ginny said wickedly as she leaned in and parted her lips slightly.

"No, I mean the present?" Harry laughed against her mouth. "Would you still want to go?"

Ginny pulled back to stare down into his eyes and pushed his scruffy hair away from his face.

"Of course!" she beamed. "Of course I'd want to go to all of those places with you, and as soon as everything's calmed down h-"

"Now," Harry said, nervously. "This week, would you come with me this week for three months and see the rest of the world?"

Ginny sat up and her shoulders sagged.

"Harry, you know I can't leave now, Ron's..."

"...told me that if you use him as an excuse, I'm to send you directly to him and he'll give you what for," Harry said as he sat up and looked at her with determination, "and I've seen that guy projectile vomit, you do not want to get on his bad side!"

Ginny's head dropped and she laughed sadly. It was typical of Ron not to want to get in the way of her fun, but what kind of sister would leave her brother when he needed her most?

"But Harry, he's still so ill," she explained before glancing over to the thin, pale figure sleeping in the shade of the tree, his hair blowing in the gentle breeze.

"And he's got Hermione to look after him now. He's letting her do it. He's dropped that stubborn ego of his and he really is doing better then he was. He's been eating solid food...he's almost at Luke's level!"

Ginny burst into laughter, causing Hermione to look up from her book and smile briefly before turning another page and minding her own business once again.

"But Bill," she said as her laughter died down, "he has a baby to take care of all on his own, and he'll have Ron all day when Hermione has to go back to her job."

"Hermione has been granted compassionate leave for four weeks," Harry said, prepared for any argument, it appeared, "by which time I bet you all the Galleons in my vault at Gringotts she'll have got Ron eating properly and a lot stronger so he's less of a worry for Bill."

"But three months, Harry," Ginny sighed, "a lot can happen in three months. Look how much has happened since you got back. We nearly lost Ron and he was doing so much better over the summer."

"I am well aware that Ron could have..." Harry seemed unable to say the word died, "...but that was just a fluke or bad timing or any number of things, wasn't it? And our being there didn't stop it happening."

Ginny shuddered and shook her head.

"I can't leave him until he's better, Harry. I just can't. Can't this trip wait?"

Harry smiled and cupped her cheek in his hand. He kissed her on the lips and rested his forehead against hers.

"I will wait as long as you want to wait, Ginny," he said, "but Ron got this plan out of me and he's going to want to know why we aren't going. It's going to have to be you that tells him."

"I'm not afraid of my stupid brother," Ginny snorted.

"Oh no?" Harry raised an eyebrow and looked across the lawn towards Ron and Hermione. "Let's see how brave you are when he asks you if you're waiting for him to die so you can take a holiday, 'cause that's what he said to me when I told him we couldn't go."

Ginny's resolve wavered momentarily before she gritted her teeth and straightened her back.

"Well I'm not going to give in to emotional blackmail as easily as you Harry. I'm a Weasley, I'm immune to his powers!"

Epilogue

Ginny had been trying every unlocking charm she knew on her bedroom door. She had beaten on it with her fists, she had screamed threats through it, and she had tried to send her bat bogey hex into the room via the crack beneath the door. All that had accomplished was an airtight seal of snot all the way around it.

"I mean it Ron, open this door now!" she screeched.

The door opened with a sickening squelch and Ron threw her trunk out at her, shrunken to the size of a petite travelling case, and folded his arms across his chest defiantly.

"You're going," he said before casting a revolted eye around the dripping door frame, "and you think I'm the one who's sick!"

Ginny threw the shrunken trunk to the floor and barged into her room to raise her arms as if she was going to pound on her obnoxious brother's chest. She froze in her pose of rage when she realised that he was in no fit state to be beaten up and he looked very smug about that fact too.

"Well there you go," Ginny roared, "if you're not well enough to wrestle me out the door then you're not well enough to take care of yourself for three months without me, so I'm staying!"

Ron arched an eyebrow at this and his lips curled into the biggest smug-git smile she had seen on his face in a very long time.

"I'm not well enough to look after myself, you're right."

Ginny was dumbfounded. She had been prepared for many things, but not Ron's agreement.

"Hermione's going to look after me."

"Oh right," Ginny snorted," like you'd let her nursemaid you for three months without putting your great fat foot in it again like last time!"

"I'm going to take Luke to his baby prison," Ron began before Hermione bellowed up the stairs in exasperation.

"Playgroup!"

"Same difference," Ron shrugged, and Ginny had to nod her own agreement, "anyway, they run it at this centre next door to the Diagon Alley entrance to St Mungo's and they have this thing there for people that won't die when they're supposed to."

"It's a rehabilitation programme, Ronald!" Hermione yelled wearily.

Ron grinned, and Ginny knew that he was doing this on purpose because he knew that Hermione was eavesdropping on them. She smiled back at him.

"So what's a rehabilitation programme when it's at home?" Ginny asked grudgingly.

"It's something about making yourself useful when you get better and finding a job and stuff, but that comes later on. You and Harry will be back by then."

"We're not going!" Ginny snarled, her frustration threatening to turn her face purple.

"Yeah, yeah, as if you have a say in this, woman," Ron waved a dismissive hand and Ginny could have sworn she heard Hermione literally spitting chips at the bottom of the stairs, "Anyway, while Luke's terrorising the other babies and Bill's enjoying having...well, a life, I'll be getting on this special diet thing that's supposed to bulk me up without making me sick."

Ginny opened her mouth and then closed it again. She took a step towards Ron and stared into his eyes suspiciously to determine whether he was telling her the truth.

"Really?"

Ron's smug grin melted into a softer smile.

"Really."

Ginny swallowed and took Ron's hands in her own.

"So you're going to start eating properly again...if I go, y'mean?"

"I'll do it whether you're here or not, thank you very much," Ron tutted. "The people there work with people with Nex Ultionis all the time, and they've come up with foods that don't react so badly with the potions. As soon as I've got the extra stuff I had to take for the pneumonia out of my system and built up my resilience against the treatment again, Hermione's compassionate leave will be up, and I can go into this not dying thing."

Ron and Ginny paused to listen to Hermione muttering at the bottom of the stairs before Ron kicked the bedroom door closed behind him. The bat bogeys sealed the door again with a 'schloop'. Ron shuddered and Ginny laughed. They swung their connected arms in a way they hadn't done since they were little. After a moment Ginny stepped in towards Ron and hugged him.

She didn't tend to do that very often, not just because she and Ron weren't much for sibling cuddling but because it broke her heart to be able to feel just how bony Ron was, and she sighed into his chest.

"I've been looking after you for so long now, I don't want anybody else taking over," she sighed.

"Taking the credit for when I get better, y'mean?" Ron said as he gave her a slight squeeze.

"Of course," Ginny chuckled.

She had to let him go, it really was like clinging on to a bag of broomstick handles, and she pulled him over to sit down with her on the bed.

"You wouldn't go if it was me," she said.

"You wouldn't let me stay if it was you," Ron threw back.

"That's not fair," Ginny grumbled.

"None of this is, Gin," Ron smiled as he put his finger beneath her chin and lifted it so she had no choice but to look him in the eye, "You want to know what you'll come back to in three months? The exact same bloody situation. I won't be any worse..."

"You don't know that," she began but Ron continued on with his speech.

"...Luke will still be a baby..."

"He might be walking by th-"

"...and Fleur will still be dead."

Ginny felt her words jam in her throat and back up all the way down, deep inside of her. She couldn't believe he'd just said that.

"You need to take a break, Ginny," Ron said sadly, "You need to do this, because I can't take three months off being ill, and Bill can't take three months out of being a single parent, and Luke can't take time off his busy shitting-himself schedule!" Ron had broken into a smile as he said the last part.

Ginny felt her eyes burning and she took hold of Ron's large hands once again.

"When did you get so wise, you git?"

Ron's smile widened into that infuriating, exasperating, infectiously lovable grin of his.

"It's amazing how profound a bloke feels with his head down a toilet!"

"I'll send postcards and we'll take pictures and," Ginny paused to give Luke a big sloppy kiss, "I'll check the bracelet every day."

She flung herself at Hermione and whispered a thank-you into her bushy brown hair for the wonderful idea of the bracelet.

It worked in the same way as the contact Galleons the D.A. had used to use. Every day Hermione would send Ginny a status report on the boys and she had sworn not to withhold anything from her, no matter how upsetting it might be.

'If it's something you'd want to know, then I want to know it too,"  Ginny had informed Hermione.

"Come on, Ginny," Harry called, "Fred and George have to get us to the international portkey site by noon or we're buggered!" Harry called back from the front gate, where he stood with Ron.

"I'm coming!" she snapped back at him with annoyance.

"You're buggered, mate," Ron sniggered.

Ginny watched as Hermione turned and took Luke from his father's arms before she jumped up at Bill and hugged him for all she was worth.

"Look after 'em for me, yeah?" she said before dropping down to the ground.

"When have I not?" Bill smiled before ruffling her hair like the git he was.

Ginny batted his hand away and flattened down her hair once more.

"And you get out and have some fun while Luke's in baby prison, you deserve it," she instructed, ignoring Hermione's grumble at the family's insistence that outside child care was some form of punishment for being difficult.

"I'll try," Bill shrugged.

Ginny was about to shove her brother in the chest when Fred hooted the car horn and George leaned out of the window to holler at her to get a move on.

She rolled her eyes and waved to Bill, Hermione and Luke as she rushed down the path to see Harry slapping Ron on the shoulder and ordering him to look after himself. She reached up and grabbed Ron around the neck to kiss him on the cheek.

"You promise to do as your told, do what the healers tell you and what Hermione and Bill tell you," she yammered before pulling Ron's jacket tightly around him, "and keep warm? It's getting colder now."

"Ginny we've been over this..." Ron huffed.

"And promise to eat properly, eat what the people at the place tell you, and don't be a pain to everyone who tries to help you," Ron opened his mouth to protest that last statement but Ginny was on a roll, "And you promise me that you'll still be here when I get back, you promise!"

Ron's annoyance faded immediately and he hugged her and told her not to be stupid.

"Promise, Ron, please?" she said as they broke away.

Ron looked her hard in the eye.

"I promise. I'll see you in three months. I want a present."

Ginny broke into laughter at Ron's sincerity and soon he was teasing her and messing up her hair again in the same way Bill had just done.

"What is it with you prats? Just 'cause your hair is a mess doesn't mean you have to mess mine up as well!"

She waved as Harry dragged her away towards the car.

"I'm bringing you back chocolate, Weasley, so you'd better be able to eat it by then," Harry warned.

"I'm working on it!" Ron laughed.

Hermione and Bill wandered down the path to stand with Ron at the front gate and wave them off. Ginny stared through the back window until the street was swallowed up and she couldn't see them anymore.

She turned back and saw Fred and George arguing about the quickest way through the Muggle streets before looking at Harry and smiling.

"Where are we going first, then?" she asked him.

Harry pulled her along the seat towards him and put his arm around her.

"Where nobody knows us."

End